William B. Wright Jr. interview (transcript)

Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 1
RANCH FAMILY DOCUMENTATION PROJECT
TRANSCRIPTION COVER SHEET
Interviewee: William Wright
Place of Interview: Western Folklife Center, Elko, Nevada
Date of Interview: February 3 and 4, 2012
Interviewer: Randy Williams
Recordist: Randy Williams
Recording Equipment: Marantz digital recorder: Model no.: PMD660;
Shure omnidirectional microphone: Model no.: MX 183
Transcription Equipment: Power Player Transcription Software: Executive Communication Systems with foot pedal
Transcribed by: Susan Gross
Transcript Proofed by: 17 April 2012;
Brief Description of Contents: Mr. William Wright talks about his many life experiences, including those centered on ranching, flying, and his military years, as well as childhood memories, and people and events that influenced his life.
Reference: RW = Randy Williams (Interviewer)
WW = William Wright (Interviewee)
NOTE: Interjections during pauses or transitions in dialogue such as “uh” and starts and stops in conversations are not included in transcribed. All additions to transcript are noted with brackets.
TAPE TRANSCRIPTION
[Part 1 of 2 – 00:01]
RW: Okay, it is the third of February 2012 and I’m here with Mr. Bill Wright, at the Pioneer Hotel, at the Western Folklife Center (on the third floor). We’re going to talk about ranching, ranching families.
Mr. Wright, what is your full name, and your birthday? Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 2
WW: William Bleecker Wright, Jr.
RW: Okay, how do you spell “Bleecker”?
WW: [Laughing] I knew you’d ask that; B-L-E-E-C-K-E-R.
RW: Okay.
WW: Of course you asked that [laughs].
RW: Yeah, I need to know that. So we were just talking off tape a little bit about meeting your wife, but before we get to that, I’m curious about – you’re here, in Elko County, and it sounds like you’ve been here a long time; were your parents from Elko County?
WW: Yes. And I think maybe that’s where the relations start, we get a chance to do that other, and we’d have fun with that story, about my wife.
RW: Yeah, we’ll get to that.
WW: But for now –
RW: But let’s get to you being born, and all that good stuff.
WW: That’s what I’d like to, that’s how I thought we would start. Now don’t let that get lost.
RW: We won’t.
WW: Yeah; oh, goody-good!
RW: If you would like to eat, you just eat – we can talk and eat.
WW: Okay, shut it off for a sec.
RW: Okay, we’ll just put it on pause.
WW: Yeah.
RW: There we go.
WW: I don’t choke to death when I’m talking.
[Stop and start recording]
[01:49]
RW: Okay, I can hear myself. So we just turned it off for a second. So when’s your birthday? You may have told me –
WW: It’s turned on now isn’t it? Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 3
RW: It is; I just turned it back on.
WW: Good. It’s on August 29, 1930.
RW: 1930? I’m curious about your family – your parents and –
WW: I’ll give you that whole thing.
RW: Yeah, I’d love to hear it.
WW: I’ll expand all I can on that, because I love that.
RW: Okay.
WW: It was – well, I’ll have to keep backing up, though, with my grandparents and parents. I’ll start with me and try and go from there.
Pa was the manager (we owned nothing); he was the manager of a giant ranch out in the same area where we are today: sixty-five miles long (approximately) – I’ve written this – about 25 miles wide. And in those days, of course, it was a very (the Depression) labor-intensive in those days. Everything was, you know –
RW: Sure.
WW: Now Ma was a southern California girl (actually, I think born in Philadelphia in 1904). Pa was born in Los Angeles in 1895.
RW: What were their names?
WW: His name is William B. Wright (William Bleecker Wright); her name was Linda Mackellar Schwartz (S-C-H-W-A-R-T-Z).
[03:56]
But anyway, (and I’ll go back to that whenever you want) but me – I was the first kid, and so – well, they married in 1928, I think, Sierra Madre, California. And anyway, I was the first kid, so she went home to Sierra Madre to have me. So I was born in Pasadena Hospital.
RW: But your dad was out here by then?
WW: Yeah, well yeah. Because they – this was his business.
RW: Okay; so he’s managing a ranch, or he’s working on a big ranch out here –
WW: A huge one.
RW: What was the name of that ranch? Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 4
WW: It was the old 7S – we called the whole outfit the 71 Ranch. Now, the 71 Ranch is just one of the many ranches that make up this completely contiguous thing.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: And I grew up, and the iron was the 7 lazy S. And we, of course, like you sort of match it with your own family – we took it as ours, “That’s ours.”
And the way that they got together was that his mother lived across the street (in those days) in Sierra Madre, from the Schwartz’s. And he went over to see the incredibly beautiful sister of hers (I guess there were nine kid, see; yeah, because one died).
RW: So these are the Schwartz’s your dad went over to see?
WW: These are the Schwartz’s.
[06:01]
RW: Okay.
WW: And these are my Grandmother Schwartz’s kids (my uncles and aunts). And he went over to see her, and he just saw my mother (who was much younger, etc., etc.), and paid no attention. Well later, when she was 16 years old, she was spectacular too, actually. And a boyfriend picked her up, in apparently a convertible (even in those days – obviously somebody with a lot of money) picked her up, took her to the end of a little street, and then [makes engine noise] went right through the stop sign at the Boulevard stop, and [makes grinding sound] just wiped the bottom of her face off.
RW: Oh, no!
WW: Destroyed the jaw –
RW: Oh.
WW: Smashed the teeth, just everything. And you can imagine, a real good-looking girl, what that does – 16 years old. Well anyway, she recovered [laughs].
But anyway, a long time later his mother, who was very much of a horse lady, (and apparently had been a real good-looking girl too) he wanted to bring his mother up to the ranch which he had been managing since, I don’t know. I think 1923 he’d been the manager. And it says now, of course – yeah, 1923; and so this must be ’27, ’28.
[08:02]
RW: So how did your dad get ranch skills? How did he rise up in the ranks? How did this happen?
WW: I’ll go back to that. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 5
RW: Okay.
WW: Because it’s quite a story for sure; I love it.
So Ma – he knew her, and he felt very sorry for her; so he invited her to come with his mother, as a chaperone (and I’ve got pictures of them). And he took them up in this time of year when he could do it; he took them up to what they call Hidden Lakes, where he used to love to go fishing. And he took his mother, and Ma, etc., etc.
But back where he came from, where she – where did Granny Wright come from? Her name was – her last name was Wilson or Holmes – Holmes Wilson; that’s something we’ve got to get straight: Jessica Holmes Wilson; Jessica Wilson Holmes [laughs]. And she didn’t tell anything to anybody until she was really getting old. And then she told my mother a little bit about her.
She told my mother how she hated to have to read to her dad when he got old, and she would have to read to him. And he was the head Episcopalian minister of the New York area.
RW: Wow.
WW: Then – we don’t know that, we’re working on it. And then she went out west and she married Jack Wright (that would be John Wright).
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: Don’t know what the old name is, I’ve got a picture of him. And he was a freelance journalist from the New Jersey area, and he came west. And of course, everybody could ride horseback, and he joined one of those trail herds (he knew nothing about that), but he joined one of those trail herds from Texas to Montana.
[10:40]
And I don’t think it went very far, but he cowboyed, helped herd the cattle (anybody could do that then), and ended up in southern California. The other, let’s see – the other grandfather Schwartz was a big family (an ancient, ancient family) in the Philadelphia area (Pennsylvania). And in fact, some of their names are on the original street in Philadelphia that you can go to in the historic district. And I have a black and white picture somewhere (at the ranch, I guess) of a graveyard, and I think it’s in Conway (or North Conway), New Hampshire, which is one of us.
RW: Whoa.
WW: And this is why this is critical, these things – because already I’m forgetting some of these details.
RW: Um-hmm. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 6
WW: Which was grandma Schwartz, and my mother said that we were related to four (meaning my kin), four people that signed the Declaration of Independence; one of them was William Penn, who apparently became the first governor of Pennsylvania. And then one was the Penn of the Revolution, which was Hamilton (I mean, I use to know those names).
RW: Uh-huh. So long-standing families?
WW: Yeah.
RW: In the United States.
WW: Yeah.
RW: So those families, then made their way west, to California?
[12:39]
WW: And that’s what’s interesting: how and why. The Mormon bunch (don’t get offended, I’ve got too many good Mormon friends – LDS).
RW: [Laughs]
WW: And one of our grandkids joined the Latter-day Saints. Anyway, and they’ve taken care of me super, and my mother admired them tremendously, for many reasons: they take care of each other, their independence; she loves their rules (even though you may be a Jack Mormon). Or what do you call it? The black sheep, etc. Anyway, so grandpa Schwartz – big family: four boys in Philadelphia (Germantown).
RW: Okay.
WW: Germantown today would scare you. But Germantown Academy; and I think they’re a wealthy family. And there were four boys, and they were extraordinary guys. And grandpa Schwartz (Preston Schwartz) was such a good fighter, that he trained in the gym with John L. Sullivan – the first heavyweight champion (and he was a middle weight). And he was so good, but they wouldn’t let him make money because he came from the upper crust.
RW: Hmm.
WW: But he could beat anybody. And the other one, Walter Schwartz, who later was president of – what’s that huge company now, that makes everything in the world? Anyway, real good looking guys. And I don’t know what the others looked like, but they were classy people, but boy were they tough.
[14:58] Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 7
And I always loved this story – I’ve loved to tell this story, because I’ve heard it from different sources, including my grandmother herself (he called her Katie).
RW: And this would have been her father?
WW: Katherine Schwartz.
RW: Um-hmm?
WW: I mean, that’s not Holmes, that’s right; Katherine Schwartz – I’ll have to look up her old name. Anyway, these four boys – a famous story about them that is just absolutely true: in those days they had the circuses, and they had a lot of wild things. And they had the guy that if you could last in the ring with him for one minute, you got paid some extraordinary, like $4 and something. And then if a wrestler could last, same thing. Well they kept digging grandpa.
RW: To get out there, and get in the ring!
WW: Get in the ring, and the kid was only 16, or something you know – really young. And okay, so Grandpa Schwartz got in the ring, and in the first round he knocked the guy completely cold. Well, huh – then maybe it was vice versa, the order, of whether it was grandpa, or Uncle Walter (as they called him), but then Walter was a wrestler; the wrestler guy in there (and he was a champion wrestler in what we call high school type thing). He got in the ring and pinned the guy immediately. So okay, “We owe you guys the money, we’ll meet you after the circus at a certain place.” And of course, there was the beef gang – remember what the beef gang was?
[17:08]
RW: No!
WW: The beef gang – if you’re a sailor they were hired guys that would come up and knock you in the head, and drag you down, and stick you on the ship that was headed for sea.
RW: Oh, no!
WW: Yeah, I mean they were that type.
RW: They weren’t really interested in paying your grandfather and uncle?
WW: Of course they weren’t!
RW: [Laughs]
WW: They weren’t going to pay – those guys were a disgrace! So but the four brothers went down there [laughs].
RW: [Laughs] They brought their own beef gang! Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 8
WW: Well, they beat up the guys that tried to get them, so bad, that they took the money (just the money they were owed), threw the rest on top of those guys and left. Then he now is – how old is he? Preston Schwartz, I don’t know; but his wife (to be) Katherine was 16. And he was down on the river there, in Philadelphia, and they had been to church and they was dressed to the nines – remember those straw hats? And just a beautiful, beautiful guy – he stood like this, you know, just a beautiful guy.
And they walked by those bars where all those sailors were, and (this is a true story, for sure), and the sailors made rude remarks (in those days they’d be a little different than today), but they made rude remarks about this girl. And he didn’t say anything, they just kept going. And they went to the corner, and he stopped, and he said, “Katherine, take my hat.” [Laughs] And Uncle Walter himself told me about it also; but Katherine (Grandma Schwartz) told me about it too.
[19:12]
But he just went back in there [laughs], and there were four of those guys in there, and he just destroyed them – just a savage animal. And I asked grandma, I said, “What did he do when he came back?” And she said, “He didn’t do anything, he just straightened his suit, and didn’t say a word.”
That’s this thing; I knocked it off of my hand. [Talking about something knocked off in the room.]
RW: I see it.
WW: Oh, there it is, I see it. Get her?
RW: Yep. Maybe you just lost a pin.
WW: Yeah, we’ll take it when we go. So it’s easier for me to talk if I’m animated.
RW: I’m that way too. I’ve got to use my hands.
WW: I know. But anyway, he was very successful. Some of these kids, including my mother (she might have been the last one that was born in Philadelphia), and the others were born in California. And uncle Charlie – there was an uncle Charlie, uncle Bill, uncle Tom – no, Tom is younger than-I’d have to think that through, I will in a few minutes. But he got typhoid fever really bad; Preston did (meaning grandpa).
RW: Um-hmm?
WW: Really bad. And I think he came with one son – the older son, probably Charlie, is at southern California for himself.
RW: I see. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 9
WW: And totally recovered, and loved southern California. And he went home and sold everything, and loaded this whole tribe on the train, and went to southern California. And once again, he did very well – he ended up, well he used to love to ride in his big, like a Cadillac, they call it. And a street car came right, dead-ended – he owned a whole block there, in those days – dead-ended right there. He’d get on the streetcar and go to Pasadena, or Los Angeles where he worked.
[21:47]
Pa, if it’s okay to skip back with him now –
RW: Okay.
WW: Incidentally, the old home is still – oh, they apparently (my mother showed me), apparently when they first came to southern California, they lived in a big, old house somewhere else, but then they came to the house that I knew so well.
RW: Right.
WW: And is still there.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: But anyway, Pa – they had no money, and Pa did so well as a paperboy in Los Angeles (I think there were 400,000 people there then), selling papers, that he bought a little pony with his own money, and a little cart, and delivered papers with it. And he made it so good – listen, this kid was a high achiever – he did so good (young Bill Wright), that when they went to Sierra Madre, he was nine years old and he made enough money to buy a full-size horse!
RW: Wow.
WW: [Laughing] Okay. So I’ve been told that he went on to be – I’ve seen the yearbooks, he became the student body president of Pasadena High School. And I’ve seen the yearbooks, even in those yearbooks he wrote western songs, and stuff; he just wanted to be a cowboy; and of course, he was a horseman.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: And he went to work in various places as a young cowboy: Arizona – no, New Mexico, probably Arizona also, and Mexico, Wyoming, Montana, California again. Anyway, he came home at a break (Christmas or something) to see his mother, and she had a friend who was a Yale alumnus, and they went to either Los Angeles or Pasadena – Los Angeles.
They rode that train, you know – they went over there to this big alumni reunion of Ivy League. And the Yale guys were sitting here, but right over there was a round table from Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 10
Dartmouth. And the Dartmouth guys were just – they were like some of the places you and I may have seen around here last night: raucous, fun –
[24:55]
RW: [Laughs]
WW: And Pa said to this one individual, he said, “Gee, I bet it would be fun to go to a place like that.” And this guy said, “Are you serious?”
And he said, “Yeah.” And on that conversation – he was a friend of my grandmother’s, see, but he loaned Pa $500, and bought him a one-way ticket to Boston; and he went to Dartmouth.
RW: Wow.
WW: And he had to carry bags in the summer at north station and stuff. And if you know Boston – do you?
RW: I don’t.
WW: Oh, well north station is – north station north station.
[Laughter]
So he went to Dartmouth, where he played football, and he boxed (of course), and you never saw such a – and he started the Dartmouth Camera Club, and he ski jumped. And he wandered off into the north on the Dartmouth Outing Club – which would go to Canada.
RW: Oh, wow.
WW: On breaks and stuff. And then – he’d have never had made it – he was biology, or something, and he had to go to Tufts –
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: To summer school once.
RW: Um-hmm?
WW: Because he was just, he was so dumb.
RW: [Laughs]
WW: And then (pardon me for not looking at you when I’m talking, because I’m just trying to pull it out). And he was saved by World War I, because the instant the war was declared (which would be 1917 America got involved, correct?) It started in 1914, he was class of Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 11
1918, so his class graduated early so they could go to war, and they all poured out and enlisted.
[27:13]
And when he was at Dartmouth, he was a Zeta [fraternity]; they were crazier than coyotes, wild. He used to say there were 54 of them, and he’d have to put 53 of them to bed on the weekend –
RW: [Laughs]
WW: Because he didn’t drink, zero. And anyway, he went to war, and he was totally qualified, just what they’re looking for, but the line was huge. The government doesn’t always tell things straight, and this officer came back and said, “Hey,” to him, he said, “Hey, you want to go to war?” Pa said, “Yes.” And he said, “You can go to war faster if you get in this line.” He said, “You’ll learn to fly the airplane, but you get to go to war a lot faster.” Which, as an observer –
RW: Observer?
WW: Yeah, in the air. Pa – I’ve got pictures of him – instead of having the full wings, it’s cut in half. So you know sitting in front of those damn things and being killed, he was one of two survivors of his unit.
RW: Oh!
WW: But! [Laughs] But like me, lucky baby, he developed . . . . Do you know who Patricia is? Our daughter-in-law?
RW: I don’t.
WW: She’s an orthopedic surgeon here.
RW: Okay.
WW: We had to marry her to [??]
RW: [Laughs]
WW: But anyway, she’s a wonderful girl (and a beauty), half Puerto Rican, half German. Her mother, who I really liked, was a Hitler’s youth. She told me, “Because I don’t point fingers.”
[29:29]
RW: Sure.
WW: She told me things nobody else knows. She took care of me once when I was – my first, I think my first hip operation at Reno. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 12
But anyway, back to Pa. He got tonsillitis so bad, that it was killing him. He didn’t go with the unit overseas, so he lived. And my grandmother told me this, but what happened was, he had real bad tonsillitis, and he was in the military, and the doctor said, “Here, kid; stand there, open your mouth.” And the doctor reached in and cut them off.
RW: Oh.
WW: And that led to such infection –
RW: Sure.
WW: That he almost died. Patricia says she can’t believe that. Patricia is a surgeon, I’m not.
RW: Right.
WW: So you figure it out. Anyway, he lived. So when the war was over, they turned them all loose. His classmates [asked] “Where are you going?”
“I’m going back to cowboying for $30 a month.”
Russell Thorpe was a big-time rancher in Wyoming; big time. One of those that save the – interest in museum, save the carriages, and everything. And he told me to my face about the first time this kid showed up.
RW: Your father showed up?
[31:29]
WW: Yeah. And he said, “This kid came to me,” and he said – oh, the Dartmouth guy, he said, “You’re crazy, with your college education?”
RW: Right; because he had graduated, right?
WW: Yeah; he graduated [laughing]! I don’t know if he could’ve made it otherwise, but the war did it.
RW: Before the war?
WW: Oh, yeah – no, he graduated from Dartmouth.
RW: Okay. And so they’re all saying, “Crazy!”
WW: Just think, “I graduated from Dartmouth.”
RW: Right.
WW: So anyway, as a kid he said, “We were loading cattle on a train.” And he said, “This kid came up to me,” and he said (of course, actually a veteran of the war). Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 13
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: I mean, age-wise.
RW: Right.
WW: And he said, “He wanted a job, did I have a job for him. I said, ‘No, we’re totally full, we’ve got a complete crew. We’ve got a real good crew, we don’t need anybody.’” And he said that the kid just was so insistent, suddenly, Russell Thorpe told me, he said, “Listen.” He said, “Okay, just jump on that train, and go with them cattle to Montana.”
And he later wrote things about Pa; he said that this kid turned out to be one of most exceptional – he never ever had a person like that before. He fed 400 steers in a terrible, bad winter; froze his hands so the rest of his life they were like this. In those days they packed them in snow, and he went to the doctor, and they had to amputate, they said. Pa said, “Screw that deal, I’m out of here.” They didn’t amputate; he took care of those cattle. Mr. Thorpe told me himself, he said, “I never saw a cowboy, I never saw a human that could take care of that many cattle in those conditions.”
[33:37]
RW: Hmm.
WW: And then Pa told me about how he learned to do things, and I’ve got great pictures for you of him up there. How he learned to do things – the cow boss for Mr. Thorpe was one of the old trail herd bosses. From down south, clear to Montana, he knew how to handle cattle. And Pa told me how they went to the river up there – what would it be? the whatever it is up there – went to the river, and how he would just take these cattle on a crew, and just go like this and go out on a sandbar like this.
RW: Hmm.
WW: The next thing the cattle were swimming across the river with no problem.
RW: Wow.
WW: I mean all those things.
RW: Right.
WW: And then granny Wright, who lived with us a lot of years, off and on later, insisted that I learn that poem “The Zebra Dun.”
RW: I love that.
WW: And it was obvious why, because she told me the true story. Here’s Pa, the young cowboy, and they had over 2,000 head of cows – calves were gone – 2,000 head of cows. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 14
And a boss – they took them to the train, and boss, and this guy jumped off the train wearing a hat like that.
RW: Like your hat?
WW: Yeah, a bowler.
RW: A bowler.
[35:39]
WW: And dressed to the nines: just in a black suit, little chain, and in those days, those tight pants, and spats –
RW: Spats?
WW: Yeah.
RW: Uh-huh.
WW: Just a beautiful guy; a lean, just a nice guy. He jumped off the train, and he was representing the buyer.
RW: Okay.
WW: And the boss said, “Mr. So and So,” and Pa is standing there, and the other cowboy. “And Mr. So and So,” he said, “I’d just like to borrow a horse and ride through them for a few minutes.”
The boss said, “Here’s all your cattle.”
He said, “That’s fine, but I just like to borrow a horse.”
So he gave him a horse, and he disappeared in the herd, and he came back [snaps his fingers] so quick, that the cowboys just went, “[Gasps],” they couldn’t believe it. To the boss he said, “Mr. So and So, I’ll take all of them except,” I think it was 13 head – it was 12 or 13 head. “There is a bad jaw, there’s a certain eye, there’s this, there’s that, there’s this. I’ll take the rest.”
And so you can understand, you know, I came up to my – well, I mean, I copied the cowboys I grew up with. I walked crooked and bull-legged, and I couldn’t stand it because I couldn’t ride my horse up to the house on the hill to go to school.
But anyway, “The Zebra Dun” tells the story.
RW: Yeah.
WW: I didn’t want to ever do anything I wasn’t doing; I was just going to cowboy all my life, and I thought I could ride anything you could saddle up, of course. And a kid, you know Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 15
he kind of looks down on the educated fellars [laughs]; well that kind of took care of that problem.
RW: Right.
WW: You know, so she would mainly just sit; and she and Pa would yell at me – everybody would yell back. You’ve always got to sit like a soldier on a horse: you never slump, and you always have to sit like this, or you make your horses uncomfortable – I mean you make a mark on their withers.
[38:27]
RW: Oh!
WW: The saddle does.
RW: Okay.
WW: And anyway, those type of things. And let’s see, what was another thing like that? I told you this morning, I guess, that one about Billy the Kid?
RW: Right.
WW: Yeah. T.E. Mitchell?
RW: Uh-huh – that your dad wrote out to him and asked him?
WW: Yeah; T.E. Mitchell, and Albert K. Mitchell – each one of them, later (many, many, many years later) Pa became president of the American National Cattlemen. And Albert J. Mitchell (wait; Albert C.T.E. Mitchell, yeah) became president right after Pa.
RW: Well I’m curious about your Pa. How did he get from Montana down to –?
WW: Yeah, and I’ll try and get in there.
Ask Mr. Russell again, and so he did all these things. Well, Mr. Russell was very, very impressed with him. He told stories to me about how he put him on a train to Chicago with the cattle. And he said he’d never had anybody like that, that would guard those cattle and be so responsible.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: That they got all the way. He got robbed: had all his clothes taken off in a dark spot, by the beef gang at a sighting – not in Chicago – a sighting somewhere. And Pa managed to get hold of some friend, somehow, and got re-dressed, re-clothes, re-everything (took all his money).
[40:33] Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 16
Mr. Russell Thorpe took him because he was like he was, took him to the Wyoming Stock Growers Convention (the state convention). And there was Mr. Bixby; Mr. Bixby was from California. Mr. Bixby owned the ranch that included – do you know what Signal Hill looks like?
RW: Yes.
WW: With the oil wells –
RW: Uh-huh.
WW: How it’s a hump like this?
RW: Yes.
WW: Well he owned half –
RW: Wow.
WW: That hill, to the – let’s see, that hill runs – if you’re north and look at it, he owned the half that goes to the east (or southeast), and there’s a great big ranch there. And these two guys are old friends.
RW: Mr. Thorpe and Mr. Bixby?
WW: Yeah. And Russell Thorpe: “Hey, how you doing?”
“Well, I’m doing really well. But the only thing I need and I don’t have doesn’t exist! I need an educated cowboy.” [Laughs]
And Mr. Thorpe said, “I got one.” And introduced them [Pa and Mr. Bixby.] And Pa went to work for Mr. Bixby as a foreman. And then, I don’t know how it worked, he met John E. Marble.
RW: Okay?
WW: Not Marvell, now – like the marble quarry.
RW: Uh-huh.
WW: He met John E. Marble, and he worked for Bixby: he did this, he did that, he did good there, and Bixby treated him real good. And then he went to the Tulasitas Ranch at Carmel valley.
[42:41]
RW: Oh.
WW: Above Salinas. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 17
RW: Uh-huh.
WW: And on the ocean – it goes down the ocean.
RW: Wow.
WW: By – not Santa Cruz – Santa Cruz? Yeah, whatever. And he became the foreman; and not only that, but he was being allowed by Mr. Marble to start accumulating cattle.
RW: Oh, okay.
WW: And made money.
And they went to – Pa came to Battle Mountain to buy cattle. And they had a wild time; loading his cattle by a full moon night in the dark (you know how the days get long loading cattle). And one critter got out, exploded out, and broke out someplace, and took off. And the cowboys had to get him, and so Pa was delayed; hung around Battle Mountain, and he heard about the old (Union Land and Livestock as one of the names – that’s probably the name it was) going broke on the speculating on the Boston wool market – and that’s this ranch.
RW: Now is that – I might be getting things confused here – is that anything to do with the Utah Construction Ranch – the UC?
WW: No.
RW: It’s a totally –
WW: The Utah Construction was an adjacent neighbor –
RW: Okay, okay.
WW: For many years. So the Union Land and Livestock; okay so the truth of the matter was – you and I will talk about this – but the truth of the matter was it was being stolen blind by the employees also.
RW: Oh.
[44:55]
WW: And the iron – the iron that they used was? What was it? Oh, the old 71, or something.
RW: Okay. What do they call –?
WW: No – what was that iron? Anyway, it can be changed tremendously.
RW: Right. So they’re branding up their own?
WW: They’re branding their own, and everybody’s got variations of that iron. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 18
RW: Okay.
WW: And I’ll tell you, the people that ran that outfit were the Russells, and they were cowboys in a big way. I mean they knew the ball game. Well anyway, so –
RW: And your dad hears about this?
WW: Huh?
RW: Your dad’s hearing about all this? I mean, he’s coming in, he’s –
WW: I don’t think he – I don’t know how much he knows yet.
RW: Okay.
WW: But anyway, the auction was in Carson City: I don’t think it was Reno. And the person was just – first of all, Mr. Marble was a friend, as I already told you, of people like Bixby.
RW: Uh-huh.
WW: I would think he would have even been a friend of people like Leland Stanford.
RW: Okay.
WW: See what I mean?
RW: Sure.
WW: They were the heavy hitters.
RW: Right.
WW: He was a friend, probably (I know the Bixby’s were) of the Rogers who built the bay at Newport, Balboa.
RW: Oh, big money.
WW: Huge money. Later it got mixed in with me.
RW: [Laughs]
WW: But anyway, and I must tell you why, because that’s critical in my life, why the Roger’s got mixed in with me.
But anyway, at the auction only two people big heavy: boom, boom, boom, boom, boom – and it was Mr. Marble, Pa standing beside him (his foreman), and Mr. Moffit – Bill Moffit. I bet you’ve heard of him! Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 19
[47:10]
RW: Uh-huh.
WW: In a big way.
RW: Yeah.
WW: They knew who each other were, but they didn’t know each other. And anyway, I suppose you didn’t have cameras in those days, sort of. Anyway, Bill Moffit just suddenly said, “I’m through.” And Mr. Marble had it. And Mr. Marble wrote out a check, and gave it to the auctioneer. The auctioneer said, “We don’t take checks; we have to have a cashier’s check.” And Mr. Moffit was standing there, and he said, “Okay,” he said, “Just wait a minute.” He said, “If Mr. Marble will come across the street, I’ll take his check and give him the money, and he can pay you.”
So then they went back, and pretty quick Mr. Marble said – I must say, too, this is very important: I had to live my – I thought I wouldn’t have to live it after Pa died, but I did – had to live with if I didn’t do things squared up: Mr. Marble was the example how you’re supposed to do things. There’s no gray.
RW: And that stayed with you long after your dad’s gone?
WW: [Laughing] Yeah.
RW: [Laughs]
WW: Well because I once told a Poulsen family in Squaw Valley (for example), the truth. I wrote to them; I just said, “I thought after my mother died I would no longer have to live up to certain things that they had expected of me.” I said, “It doesn’t work; you can’t.”
RW: Right.
WW: Your conscience really gets you. And I’m not an angel.
But anyway: so back to Mr. Marble, “You found us a ranch, Bill; now you’ve got to find somebody to run it. I don’t want to run it.”
“I want to run it.”
[49:39]
RW: Your dad says this?
WW: Yeah. (And I’m betting Mr. Marble didn’t use my words.) “You’re crazy!”
RW: [Laughs] Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 20
WW: “I won’t allow you to have any cattle up there; you can’t take anything with you up there.” And Pa said, “Nope, that’s what I want because I grew up in that world.”
Now just to jump aside to an extreme case – the reason Pa can speak Spanish fluently, because he was forced to live for one whole year in a remote camp, in I guess New Mexico or Arizona with a Mexican who wouldn’t speak a word of English.
RW: This is before the war, when he was –
WW: Part of growing up being a cowboy.
RW: Cowboy.
WW: And in one other extreme case, he was in Montana, and he was in a tent, near a certain town somewhere (probably somewhere around Cut Bank; yeah, because it was cattle on the Indian Reservation). But anyway it was up there with another older guy, a rough guy that later died from syphilis. But anyway, they were in the tent, and there were two killers on one of those. And anyway, they were in this tent, and suddenly this older cowboy said, “We’re out of here.” And they both rolled sideways underneath the back of their tent. And the killers came in the front. So he’d been around people.
[51:41]
Well anyway, Pa – he demonstrated this seriously in later years, I mean. So he came up here, and he went to the – I’d love to show you this place – they went to Deeth on January 1st to take over the company, and it was below zero. The railroad just roars right through that ranch. Right by the old office building is a great, big house – ancient, historic house (I love it!), and the old bunkhouse – and it’s hateful the way they aren’t taking care of it.
RW: Hmm.
WW: And the office building had dark columns on it, and everything. And my wife, TJ yesterday said, “Oh,” she said, “If I could just get that building; if we could move and take it.” But anyway, Pa told me this face-to-face, he told me this: he took one cowboy –
[Phone ringing]
RW: We’re good. Let’s see, I’m going to get you back on –
WW: Pa had – ready?
RW: Okay, got you.
WW: Okay, it’s recording.
Pa had just one cowboy with him he brought from the Tulasetas.
RW: Uh-huh? Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 21
WW: Who was Hilary Barnes – Hilary Barnes is Charlie, is Harvey Barnes’ father.
RW: Okay; I was like, “I’ve got this name.” You were mentioning him before today, that’s what I’m talking about.
WW: Yeah, and the Barnes are married in with the Marvels.
RW: Yes.
WW: The Marvels rodeo the horse –
RW: Uh-huh, yeah.
WW: See.
RW: Tom and Rosita Marvel?
WW: Yeah, Tom and Rosita.
RW: Yeah.
WW: Tom and Rosita are kids of – yeah.
RW: Got you.
[53:46]
WW: So Hillary – it was below zero, and those trains rumble by, and Hilary suddenly just sat straight up from the waist and said, “I’m out of here at daylight in the morning, on the first train.” And Pa said, “I used to always tell the story that they talked to four in the morning; for some reason has made me change it to two in the morning.” I don’t know what’s true. And finally Hilary lay back in bed and said, “Okay,” he said, “I’ll stay til spring.”
RW: [Laughing]
WW: Whew! [Laughs]
RW: That would have been a lonely winter for your dad.
WW: You know what he was like, Hilary? Did I say that this morning?
RW: Hmm-umm.
WW: I spoke at his memorial service. He was 135 pounds of – let’s see, he was 135, and 110% cowboy, and he had 30 seconds of tolerance.
RW: [Laughs] He didn’t suffer fools? Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 22
WW: [Laughing] And a young guy with a young horse, you know; and my pa was just the same way. And of course, you’ve got to be saddled and ready. And here’s these two guys: they were very, very good friends. And here’s these two guys sitting on their horse, and your horse is young; and of course, you’re scared, and of course, the more scared you are, the more the horse [laughs] gets – and they’re just sitting here, like this. Oh, boy.
RW: No wonder you sat up straight in your saddle.
WW: Oh yeah, they’d yell at you, you know, “Sit straight!”
RW: Yeah.
[56:01]
WW: Anyway, so I can finish with the Pa stuff – he was a human, and he was plenty driven, and he knew how to handle people; he knew how to handle men. He knew how to handle people in a big way. And you could be anything you wanted, but you were shaped up. And he wasn’t built like me – my mother was just like me: her whole family were built like this; and grandpa Schwartz, the fighter, was just like this (I used to be built good when I was young).
Well anyway, he was built like – he was short: five feet-eight and probably weighed 165. And his shoulders were very sloped, his waist was very wide, his hips were wide, his legs were very short. And he had tremendously powerful muscles.
RW: Big arms?
WW: Yeah; and the legs – these great big thighs – he couldn’t wear Levis, he had to wear, you know, he wore a loose pants sort of a thing.
RW: Because you’re very slender, but you’re saying –
WW: Oh, I’m skinnier than –
RW: [Laughs]
WW: But anyway, mom was, and my uncles were.
RW: Okay; that Schwartz.
WW: Yeah, especially the great athletes.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: Is anybody listening? Shut that off? No, I’m going to tell you, you’ll take it out later.
They always used to call me “nigger legs” when I was a sprinter. I was very fast because my leg (especially when I was doing a lot of stuff), my legs are good here – Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 23
RW: Uh-huh?
WW: But down from the calf – the calf ends here.
RW: Oh.
WW: It’s just this big around!
RW: [Laughs]
WW: I went through a line at an alumni game at Stanford one day, and a friend of mine (now a great friend, who was a three-time All American guard), he just – I had the ball and it went [makes sound and claps]. He just reached up and caught this, like with one hand – just held me up like this, and put me back!
RW: [Laughs]
WW: You see those rough guys in this game tomorrow (or Sunday) don’t tell me I don’t know what that all feels like.
RW: Yeah.
[59:00]
WW: Well anyway, Pa and Hilary – and Pa, he would take me to the wagon with him (they had to, I was a baby); you know, as a baby I was stuck on a horse. I mean, I was just a baby, sat up there, with my legs sticking out like that.
RW: Sure.
WW: But anyway, always had to go up there, on and on, and on. But a good example of Pa: he loved surveying, of all things. And he discovered on the flats out there (close to where we live today), he found – they made them with a willow – big, old survey markers.
RW: Okay.
WW: With a willow stick, or a rock [makes knocking sound], that’s marked –
RW: Uh-huh.
WW: Corner, corner, section, corner, corner.
And they had a guy that used to scare me when I was little, who lived at the Carlson Place – a small, little ranch, tucked up there on the rim rocks above us, hidden up in there. And he was stealing cattle, and he would shoot at the cowboys all the time [ping sound]. “Don’t you come near, remember the old rule” (just like the Turks are today, incidentally, and I know them good). This means “Stop.” This means “Stop now.” The third one, “Shoot to kill.” Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 24
RW: Where you bring your hand down quick?
[61:02]
WW: No, I mean, if a guy stops you in Turkey –
RW: Stops you? Uh-huh.
WW: When I’m driving into the bad part of Turkey, you know, this means, “Stop.”
RW: Stop? Okay.
WW: Stop now, [shooting sound].
RW: Hmm.
WW: Yeah, he just goes like this with his arm, and then –
RW: Uh-huh; he didn’t want anybody up there, because he was stealing.
WW: No, and what he would do – he would change the section corners –
RW: Ah!
WW: Because he homesteaded it.
RW: Okay.
WW: And they gave him a pile of rocks, nothing else! So he went two and a half miles (as I remember) – linear miles – changed the section corners.
RW: Your dad found him out?
WW: And Pa was suspicious, and he had already befriended the county surveyor, named Settlemeyer (another famous name in western Nevada), but Elko County surveyor Bill Settlemeyer. And so he got Settlemeyer out there, “Hey, let’s look at this.” Settlemeyer said, “Hmm.” (He checked it with his transit).
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: So Pa just went straight up there to this guy. And he went in there, and he said – he just went, period. And he said, “You’ve got two choices: you change the section corners – that’s a Federal offense. You’ve got the state penitentiary, or you quit stealing our cattle, and you quit shooting at our cowboys. A deal or not?” And Pa just walked away.
And he quit shooting at the cowboys – he just shot at new ones!
RW: [Laughs] Oh, no! Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 25
[63:05]
WW: And he quit stealing the cattle except the ones he ate himself – which that was perfectly acceptable to Pa. But Hilary would complain, you know, the wagon would be out there and they’re trying to pass by, and thunk! You know, and I remember with Ma, and she’d say, “Billy, I don’t like that,” and you’d hear this crack as we rode up to his gate, his little gate below the hill: crack! bang!
And Pa would laugh, and he’d tell me, “Get down, and open that gate!” And I would. And then he’d say to Ma, he’d say, “Lenny, you and Bill will wait here.” And he’d ride up, over the hill, and we’d hear one more shot right away, zingo, and silence; and he’d come back, happy as a thing. He had two people that he dealt with like that – one was over here in the Rubies. And then we were driving there, “Bill, get up and open that gate.” Bang! Same story.
But another, critical story: we were losing lots of cattle from a family – we’re going to be careful of this; we were losing lots of cattle: stealing cattle. So Pa went to –
RW: So when they’re stealing these cattle, they’re taking the calves before they’ve been branded? Or are they re-branding?
WW: No, I’m skipping a big chunk of time here.
RW: Okay, now you’re into your time?
WW: No, I don’t think I’m alive yet. “We’re losing cattle,” Hilary had come to tell him –
RW: Got you.
WW: “Bill, we’re losing cattle.” And Pa said, “Okay.” [Laughs] “Do this.” Pa was the big boss, remember.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: He said, “Do this: find a marker – “
RW: Got you.
WW: “And cattle rope it, and tattoo it inside the lips.”
RW: Okay.
[65:20]
WW: And then Hilary (with his then wife: not Mrs. Barnes, but his wife who died suddenly – one of the great tragedies we first had to deal with), he lived at Deeth, at that time of year, not at the cross ranch up above; he lived at Deeth. When you see cattle come in with this one particular family that we know is stealing (the Anderson’s is their names), he said, “You call me.” Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 26
And Pa (like my wife says) is just a regular – who is the famous inventor? Hamilton was it, that – who invented the electric light?
RW: Edison?
WW: Huh?
RW: Edison?
WW: Edison, yes. I know my wife has often said, “He was just a Thomas Edison.” He rigged a telephone line – single wire telephone line all the way from the 71 Ranch, and stuff. And Hilary called him, “Moonlit night,” said “The cattle are in the corral, and the calf is there.”
So Pa came straight to Deeth, they climbed the fence, called the calf. It had a mark: a little tiny, brown mark on it somewhere (I think it was on the face). And they roped it, threw it on the ground, looked inside –
RW: Sure enough.
WW: So, the Andersons were brothers, and they were tough: they beat up people, they fight, they do anything – they’d shoot you, they’d do any darn thing. And I always heard how Pa did it; it was just an amazing story. Right there in Deeth (and their house was – let’s see, that would be not more than 200 yards from the corral – probably, I don’t think a quarter of a mile), he just walked up there and beat on the door.
“What do you want?” One of the brothers came out. Pa said the same thing to him, “You got two choices: quit stealing the cattle, or the Federal penitentiary.” Turned his back, and walked away. And you know, he just did things like that, and it worked.
RW: People respected him.
[68:08]
WW: Well, I’ mean they weren’t going to screw with him, yeah.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: He was a short guy, when I wrote about him, he was a presence in every room he ever walked into; nice guy, real good looking guy.
RW: Well I have a question for you: it sounds like you’ve written a lot of this up?
WW: I’ve written some of it, and I’d like – you know, I’ve written a lot of it.
RW: I’d like to get a copy, to connect – if you?
WW: I think I should give you several copies of things before you leave town. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 27
RW: That would be great.
WW: And I think they’re in Elko, and they’re at the ranch.
RW: Okay – I’m going to check our time. We’ve got about – oh, 12 more minutes.
WW: Okay, good.
RW: So I’ve got – I do want two things I want to ask you, and I don’t want to interrupt your story, but you know, one of the things people are talking about – I want to know a little bit about your operation, but I want to know about the flying. That’s so – I’m so fascinated by that.
WW: Excuse me! I’m sorry, I was caught.
First, I have to interrupt it all – is it turned on?
RW: Yep, it’s going.
WW: Mr. Rogers [knocks] – I got hay fever about the fourth of July. So from the time I was dinky, they thought I would develop asthma, I couldn’t even talk (it’s like right now) [laughs], I couldn’t talk. So my mother would take the two kids – my brother was what, 18 months younger – back to her parents in Sierra Madre.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: And Balboa, which is on the Newport peninsular – old Balboa. And she’d keep us there for awhile; then we’d go home. Well, Grandpa Schwartz (I already told you about him), he owned those places. And a great friend of his was Mr. Rogers, who built that bay, and is a legend. And Mr. Rogers had his own yacht – a huge thing: it looked like a little steamer! And there was an island there, like this – little, bitty bay island – and a bridge that goes. And then Mr. Rogers had this big house on the corner of the bay there.
And Grandpa Schwartz fished on his pier, and grandpa Schwartz was just a nut for fishing: always fished. And he was fishing, and I was with him, and I hated fishing because you had to stand around, and mess around. But I was with him, had to be grandpa, and I was five years old.
[71:24]
And here came his yacht [making engine puffing sounds]. And on the prowl was standing Mr. Rogers, dressed in a complete captain’s suit, and everything: a captain’s hat and it was heading on further up. And beside him was this little, fat boy, dressed in a sailor suit. And you know what I said?
RW: [Laughing] Something embarrassing to your grandpa? Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 28
WW: Verbatim, I said, “Look at that little, fat, spoiled, rich boy.” And grandpa just exploded; he was as quick-tempered as I am. He turned around, boy, and he said, “Listen, you’re much more fortunate than that little boy. He’s an unhappy little boy; he has a much more difficult life than you do. Don’t you ever say anything like that again!”
Well the kid was six years old – he was my best man for my wedding.
[Phone ringing]
He was a founder of Squaw Valley was his dad, Mr. Rogers.
RW: So that little boy –
WW: The little, fat boy.
RW: Ended up being your best friend?
WW: Yeah, yeah; the little fat boy became my first best friend ever. Because you know, a remote kid, I wasn’t used to other kids, or anything. And then the little girl, GeorgeAnn, was the age of my brother, and they became best friends. And that family was class, class, class. And Mrs. Rogers a white-haired person, and Mr. Rogers – I mean, they were just something else.
I don’t remember Mr. Rogers, he must have died earlier; I vividly remember Mrs. Rogers, and Mr. Rogers was obviously alive. I started visiting their house immediately; yeah, Mr. Rogers obviously was still alive. I just can’t – I remember Benny, the son-in-law, married to Mrs. Benny, who became an absolute best friend of my mother’s (there’s paintings of them together there, and stuff). But anyway, that was awfully important.
[74:33]
And back to Pa – the captain of this huge ranch.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: We did all sorts of bad stuff, supposedly; we did a lot of stuff (kids do things). Huge ranch – they can’t keep you under control. But they built a new barn when the old one burned down, and it had a downstairs, an upstairs, and a huge place for the hay, and then a paddock. A paddock, and there were windows from the place upstairs where you could hang out and watch the guys training horses. And I leaned out that window, John and I were leaning out the window, watching something to do with horses, and the foreman (named Orson) said, “Hey you boys get out of there. You can’t watch that, your Pa said you couldn’t.”
Right up the hill to his office, marched in there, “Pa, did you tell Orson,” [whispers] (that lying son of a bitch – I can still say that about that guy, who later tried to kill me); but anyway: “Did you tell Orson that we couldn’t do that?” Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 29
Pa said, “No.” And then he said, “But listen, I’m the boss here, I’m the commander; and I can’t be taking stories about my foreman or any of my employees from two little kids.” He said, “If something really dangerous, and you’re coming for that reason – something dangerous to you two – you can come to your mother or me, but otherwise, no.”
[76:34]
Guess what that meant? Guess who couldn’t come to the big boss because the big, tough men couldn’t come to the big boss for what two little kids did. That was critical in my life too.
RW: Right. I think we should turn this off.
WW: We should.
RW: Because your wife’s expecting you.
WW: We should.
RW: But you know what we should do, I think –
[End part 1 of 2 – 77:02]
[Part 2 of 2 – 00:01]
RW: So here we are, Saturday morning, again at the Pioneer, at the Western Folklife Center, with Mr. Bill Wright. It is the fourth of February, 2012, and we’re continuing with our interview on ranch families.
And Bill, we were talking about you were a little boy, and you had you know, you spent some time in California, with your mom.
WW: [Laughing] Yeah.
RW: But then you’re back on the ranch, and you’re being employed – you’re starting to do some things for your dad.
WW: Now and then interrupt me –
RW: Okay.
WW: With questions, for sure.
RW: Okay. Well, I’m just going to let you go.
WW: Well, I’ll go [laughing], I’m sure – just don’t let me down the hall. I am going to go with this “beer.” [As noted from his prompt.]
RW: Okay. And Bill has written up a list of prompts of things in his life. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 30
WW: Just, yeah, a few.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: I’m working – at home, I’m working on Indians now.
RW: Okay.
WW: Indians in my life.
RW: Got you.
WW: Naming them.
RW: Okay, so – beer.
WW: Beer; I’ll stay with the beer and cigarettes for a minute, and we don’t have to come back. I think we even make little check marks.
RW: Okay.
WW: On the beer – I told you when Pa and Hilary ran the wagon, they were very good friends. When he had a chance, he’d take Ma – and we had a little tent, or something, and we’d head for the wagon, you know. And being a little, dinky kid, I remember my little, tiny, tiny, little tent was right out with the horses. And horses, as you know, chomping at night: chomp, chomp, chomp right there. And then I loved the fact the tinkle, tinkle little stream, right there beside me – just loved that stuff; [laughing] I’ve never quit it!
[02:03]
And while we’re talking, actually (we’ll get to the beer), while we’re talking about that occasion, while it’s in my mind – which was the Carlson. The Carlson ranch was the one where I mentioned that –
RW: They were shooting?
WW: Yeah.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: And I don’t think I finished telling that Pa went to him, and told him –
RW: Right.
WW: What he shouldn’t, shouldn’t do. And I finished that part; I didn’t finish the initial conversation with him (the bad guy – I guess his name was Carlson). He said, “If you quit doing those things,” [laughs] I told you, “We will not ask you to move. This is your home until you die. But when you die, then the lines will have to go back where they belong.” Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 31
RW: Right, because he is the one that had taken more of his claim – he changed the survey?
WW: They put him on the rock pile.
RW: Right.
WW: He only had to move off the rock pile about to here, a little dinky ways, and build his cabin – it’s got a beautiful spring, and a beautiful meadow, and the willows (they used to shoot over the top). And that rock pile – I saw it yesterday when I went home – is still there, and every day – you can’t see his cabin, it’s hidden up in there, in the willows.
And anyway, so that was the understanding, and that’s how a company ended up with the property that they were supposed to have.
RW: I see.
WW: I mean you take care of everything if – they treated him great, actually, and tried to find errors.
Okay, the beer. Pa would – oh, still at the Carlson, that spot. I was taught to never get in my bedroll or sleeping bag (in modern times) without checking it, period. Hilary Barnes came to – the Carlson is full of rattlesnakes, always has been, and I mean lots of them. And Hilary Barnes came to Elko (in those days that’s a long trip in the wagon), and camped at the Carlson. And the Carlson was the very first place the wagon pulled up to when the cowboys took off in the spring.
[05:16]
RW: Right.
WW: To brand.
RW: Tell us a little bit about what a wagon would consist of?
WW: [Laughs] It was just etched in my memory, and I’ve got a lot of good pictures of them. There was a chuckwagon, pulled by four to, usually six mules – [laughs] I told you about the mules!
RW: That’s right, breaking the mules.
WW: Well!
RW: And some you didn’t break! [Laughs]
WW: Cowboys use three – and Jack said cowboys were too scared to use any of the others [laughing]. But anyway, and then it’s got the cook, or a top hand drives the team – remember that’s a multi-team; not this way, this way. All six of them hooked with the connections of the harness right on the out. And of course the lead, you’ve got lines going, the whole bit; it’s a trick to do it. And in that wagon is the chuckwagon: it’s got Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 32
the stove, it’s got the tent, it’s got a big, high seat, and of course iron wheels, iron around all wood, and just wood brakes you know. Go to the museum and look at them.
RW: I’ve seen some. Do you know a gentleman by the name of – oh, shoot, it will come to me [Mearl Rowe]; he lives up in Idaho, and he’s got a lot of wagons up in his barn.
WW: Who is he?
RW: It will come to me, and I’ll tell you.
WW: Okay.
RW: If you know him, he worked down here – he was a hand, and he worked out San Jacinto up in that area. He worked forever – he’s like in his 90s now, but he’s got some of those old wagons.
WW: We have quite a bit at the ranch. And then behind it came the bed wagon – it also was hooked up with mules, often only four of them.
RW: Now would the bed wagon have tents, or would you just sleep out under the stars?
WW: The bed wagon just had our bedrolls.
RW: Right, okay.
WW: Heaped up in there.
RW: Okay.
[08:03]
WW: And whatever other things. And the tent, the cook tent, when we camped the cook tent actually enclosed, the thing came out over the chuckwagon, and then had a big, folded out, and it had pins, canvas. And in there was a bank of lighting, you set up a table –
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: And you could eat inside.
RW: Okay.
WW: Or, many times on the open range, as you’ll see Charlie Russell’s great pictures (probably right there), you would just ride up, and they would be camped for just a short period, and the tent wouldn’t be all set up (you’d just sit out there and get fed).
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: And hopefully have a slicker. And anyway, that’s how we traveled. And we went from – Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 33
RW: What kind of cavy was you with?
WW: I wish I knew the truth of that, because there never was a cowboy that didn’t have more horses than he needed; that’s part of it – you’ve got to (I mean, sort of). And we had, with a full crew there’s Hilary, and let me think about this – usually seven of them. And each one had six or seven horses.
RW: Right; so were you doing a rope corral, were you hobbling?
WW: Yeah, just – no, no – you just set up – that also is included in that wagon, just a big, long rope –
RW: Uh-huh?
WW: And little things to fasten; and you just get them in there in the morning, and rope the horses. And in our case, unlike a lot of times now days, Hilary roped the horses.
RW: I’ve heard that – that the foreman would rope the horses –
WW: He let them out, and gave you the horse you wanted.
RW: Right, uh-huh. Tell me about that, how does that all work? It’s the company’s horses, and so the foreman’s going to decide what horse is ready? What hasn’t been ridden? The terrain? How does that all work out?
WW: Well who is the rough string rider, who rides the tough ones –
RW: Uh-huh?
WW: The young guy, some young guy.
RW: Uh-huh.
WW: But they all, in those days were professional cowboys. And before the war (World War II), like my Pa’s horses would have to be in there (horses for my father and mother – that’s extras right away).
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: He wouldn’t have to have seven, but he’d have to have at least two for her, and at least two or three for him. And I have to think – we’re talking about the seven, seven, 49, 50 – I’ll tell you, we must have had a cavy of anywhere from 60-75 horses, all the time. And wait a minute, there’s those mules –
[11:40]
RW: Um-hmm. What kind of horses? Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 34
WW: Ah-hah! Now you’re talking about the 7S – nobody rode better horses, period (and that goes for today). We rode a unique combination – basically it came from the old Army remount service – you’ve heard of that?
RW: Um-hmm, yeah!
WW: But we were – we were basically a combination of American saddle horse, mixed with (as the years went by), mixed with – let’s see, it was American saddle, what were those other mothers? They always had these great studs; what were those things? Incidentally, our work horses were all Clydesdale, all of them giant mothers. But what were those? I’ll try and think.
RW: Sure.
WW: It’s a great question, because certainly in my time, and after we got the ranch on our own, we began to mix them with quarterhorse studs, and I knew exactly the kind of quarterhorse I wanted; I didn’t want the junked-up quarterhorse, with the big muscles, and the round thing that your saddle rolls around on. I wanted a smooth-riding, long-range, distance horse that you could ride all day. A lot of people don’t understand –
[13:33]
RW: Is that like a slow – my husband’s a runner, and he talks about fast twitch, and slow twitch muscles.
WW: Right.
RW: Slow twitch – you want one that can go, and go, and go; is that what they’re called, I think?
WW: Yeah, but even that is a fascinating subject for me, which I’m directly involved in right now, today, at ninety years – whatever I am. And I’m very much involved in that, and the thoughts we had about that are quite different.
RW: With breeding?
WW: No, the thoughts that we had about humans and horses are very similar.
But anyway, we mixed in thoroughbreds – thoroughbred is probably what we had mixed in there early.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: But then it became these quarterhorses. And I want a quarterhorse (they exist) that stand tall, have good withers, and you can ride comfortably. And the dynamite moves of a classic quarterhorse, even they vary tremendously. Tomcat (the horse I was riding on that hat story) was, he was magic with his feet, and he grew up in the country; but he was much closer to a class quarterhorse, but he had withers. And he was not big, but to ride Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 35
him all day – running horses, he was so fast – and running horses, yeah. But to ride him all day? Twenty-five miles in a straight line would just beat you to death.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: And the horses I usually would use, like Piute (a horse I had named Piute), you’d just ride that mother til time froze over, and he took care of you. Come to a gully as deep as this, you hadn’t seen – this great, big, tall horse – he was a giant cat. Ah! And oh! He’d jump all the way across it, and make it –
RW: Wow!
WW: Surprised him and me, too.
RW: Wow.
[16:07]
WW: Okay.
RW: Cigarettes and beer!
WW: Yeah. So back to the rattlesnakes.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: Hilary came home late to Carlson, and he was so tired, that he said, “I always check my bed with a flashlight; not going to do it tonight.” So he got his clothes set, and he started to crawl in, and he thought that would be bad luck. And it was at the Carlson, he lit his flashlight at the very bottom of his bag was a rattlesnake, quietly.
Ugh. The beer.
RW: Now, I have a question – so you check in there, there’s a rattlesnake: what do you do?
WW: Well, you get him out of there!
RW: Yeah, right; but I mean do you kill it, or do you just take it and flop it out, and let it go on it’s way? What’s the procedure?
WW: What do I do? I’ve never found one in my sleeping bag.
RW: Okay.
WW: But I’ve dealt with them lots of times.
RW: But I mean, like I know my dad, you know, if he saw one he’d chop it’s head off with a shovel or something. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 36
WW: Yeah, that’s normally what we do; but remember you’ve got to be careful of the skull, even.
RW: Right, but I’m just wondering at nighttime – it sounds like he’s undressed, what’s he going to do with this? I don’t know, I’m just curious.
WW: [Laughing] Well –
RW: Do you just like, you know, get something and bat it in his sleeping bag or bedroll? I don’t know, I’m getting you off track, sorry.
WW: Charlie McNabb was in his 80s; and he was just incorrigible, tough cowboy. And I wasn’t married then, and we were camped at Hank’s Creek (which is loaded with snakes and stuff). And I remember, “Hey Charlie, there’s a rattlesnake over there in that bush right over there.”
“Where is he? That bush right there?” He just – Mary was there – he just walked over there, and he was just wearing cowboy boots, and he just stepped on the bush, and tromped around, killed the snake.
RW: Yeah.
WW: That’s not what the book says.
RW: Exactly [laughs].
[18:29]
WW: And right across from him – Cliff Gardner I showed these places to – but right across from him there’s a little moundy hill, and two men and 13 mules were killed there by lightening.
RW: Hmm.
WW: One terrific shot. And I went there for years (archaeology-type thing), hoping for evidence of that. I found bones, and stuff – but that was always the story at that hill. And Mary and I almost got killed, right after we were married by doing something stupid right there with our tent – same place.
But back to the beer – I’m back at five years old. We’ve gone to Coyote Lakes (just let that be in there); we’ve gone to Coyote Lakes (wonderful place), and there was like a little shack (two rooms). And because it’s Pa and Ma – the cowboy and his wife who weren’t part of the seven (they were the outriders in a place of fences); they spent all summer in that part of the country. And when the wagon would get close enough, he’d come in and help us.
But he was something. But anyway, they let us use their cabin (one of the rooms), and I was hunting horned toads. And I was five years old, and I was running likely cut, it was Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 37
about the fourth of July, and I was tearing through the bushes, and catching horned toads. And I was soaked with sweat – a little kid, you know.
And I came running all the way back to the house, and came in. And Pa was standing in there, and he had a mug of beer (basically he never drank), but he had a mug of beer. I can only tell you what I saw. And my mother was there (she, of course, didn’t touch anything). And I saw that, I said, “Give me a drink!” And Ma said, “Don’t let him touch that, drink that.”
[21:00]
I thought, see, it was root beer – which was my favorite drink on earth. We couldn’t have root beer out there; I don’t know where they’d get it. But anyway, that’s root beer. And he said, “Yeah, go ahead and drink it.” That was the last drink I ever had until I was 50 or so (there-abouts). And even today, if I drink some – and I will with Mexican food – it’s one drink.
And it was such a terrible thing, it was such a shocker – and that isn’t the only reason that I didn’t drink, however. The reason that my folks didn’t – certainly I never saw them, I never saw Pa ever with a mug of beer again. Why? Maybe Ma wouldn’t let him do it in front of us.
But we lived at the 71, the big house, two-story, been an officer’s house for all our days. And the men’s – we’ll have to go there with you some day, we’ll make a point of it – but it’s a huge place. And the kitchen: a giant kitchen, with a giant stove in the house, and then the boss’ dining room is here, like this at this end of the kitchen, and the window faces the Ruby Mountains, beautiful secret pass – big window. And it’s in the bunkhouse and stuff. And the men come around, past the kitchen, and come in a side door. And their place to eat (it amounts to a cookhouse, it’s all in there), a big, big long table in there. And then at the end of that table is a closed door, and that’s where the cook lives.
[23:12]
Well anyway, okay – actually, as far as alcohol, that’s that first story.
RW: Okay.
WW: And the alcohol caused everything terrible that I saw in my early life, including the closest call (I’ve had some close calls). I told you about the reflexes, [laughing] I told you about God, but this is the exact story. And this was written so long ago, it will be even more accurate than today.
And I was so terrified, and it was so close, that post-traumatic-stress-syndrome, that I [makes shaking, shivering sound] just shook like this anytime I saw any evidence of drinking.
RW: From taking that beer that one time? Or from something else? Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 38
WW: From this guy trying to kill me.
RW: Well I don’t know the story, what is it?
WW: Well you better – I’ll read it; I’ll just read it easier than –
RW: Okay.
WW: [Reading]
“Roscoe Worley was his name, 71 Ranch: short, dark hair, 25 years old, plus or minus. The ranch chore boy: muscular, strange walk, bow-legged. Ma and granny upstairs in the big house, John nearby, all the men gone working: 1942. The real guys have gone to war.” (You know, the people that couldn’t go were for agriculture.)
“I heard an almost animal-like shout below the hill, a sort of a scream. One of the women told me to come to the front porch.” (Which is two stories, you could see down the hill. I was south of the house. Okay.)
“They called me to come,” (and then it doesn’t say anything.) “She said (my mother) took a look, and said) “Run down to the bunkhouse and see if any of the men are there.”
I went down to the bunkhouse, the hill is like this, see, like this – a big house here, sits back from the hill a little bit. Up on the top you can see the barn yard. And he was down there, walking toward the barn, and I glimpsed him.
RW: Roscoe?
[26:23]
WW: Yeah, Roscoe was walking toward the barn like this. And he always limped like that.
“And run down to get the men” (see if there’s a guy there). “I ran as fast I could.”
I went tearing down. You had – the house is sitting here, and had to tear out the big fence, big yard – had to tear out this little driveway, and here’s a gate (not closed) – driveway comes clear in, and a building, and a big, solid fence posts, and wire. And then like this, and the hill is here, the hill goes all along. The bunkhouse is perched down here on the edge of the hill. You go down this trail, to the bunkhouse – probably from here [Western Folklife Center] at least to Capriola’s [store across the street].
RW: Okay? So we’re talking a football field?
WW: Not quite, I’d say 50 yards.
RW: Fifty yards, okay. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 39
WW: And so – and that may be a big exaggeration – no, no; it can’t be too much. And so I started back – see, I’m south of the house – what I should say is I am southeast of it still, I’m on that trail.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: Because this whole ranch is set up like a military fort, my Pa insisted it staying that way – meaning it’s set on squares –
RW: Right.
WW: East, west –
RW: Right.
WW: Every building lined up perfect.
RW: Right.
WW: “So I was south of the house, and started toward it: Roscoe appeared on top of the hill” (outside the fence, of course. The same level as the house as me, on the east of me straight east of me, sort of lurching toward me at right angles), “And carrying a long, nearly straight butcher knife in front of him that he’d gotten out of the kitchen.” (chore boy). “Razor sharp, with a blade over a foot long.”
And this will be very accurate, this story.
[Reading]
“From the ranch kitchen.” Oh, it says that. “In the first floor of the big house he shouted at me, ‘Stop! Come here!’ Then, ‘Stop!’ And speeded up his approach. A hundred, plus or minus, feet north of me was the road width and an open gate I had to get to, and through, to get onto the house. A hundred (plus or minus) feet farther and Roscoe and a slight angle on me. Closer to the gate than me, I hesitated a second, looked at him, judged the angle, and broke for it. He charged too. I remember that angle so clearly, which he had.”–
And I still remember what I did. I went as hard as I could, he went full-length, and I just, “blah!” like that. He went full length on the blade and it didn’t touch me, brought my chest back.
RW: You just moved forward, you put your chest forward out, and he went behind you?
WW: Yeah, it wasn’t my chest, it was just – [grunts].
RW: Your whole body?
WW: And he was going for this. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 40
RW: Uh-huh? And it went behind – the knife went behind you?
WW: Yeah, I just [groans] leaned forward, and meanwhile he had dived. Let’s see, Price says:
[Reading]
“I remember that angle so clearly which he had. I beat the point of the knife by ten inches to two inches. It will be forever etched in my peripheral vision: both of us running full speed at the intersection, he lunged with a knife at the end, and he just slid out across the ground, the way you do when you miss when you’re trying to get a baseball.”
RW: Right, yeah.
WW: And that gave me a split second to get cracking. “Well, totally terrified in the house, I was” – I left these blank spots to:
[Reading]
“I was totally terrified in the house. We could hear him coming, slowly and loudly, up the outside steps.”
He went by the kitchen, then steps on the outside of the house that came to the porch, where my Pa’s office was, and a full-length window – was a “V” like this, and there’s always a porch.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: He came up the steps of the house, he got on the porch, and this full-length window in my Pa’s office was here, and it had a little window in the door. Let’s see:
“We could hear him coming, slowly, and loudly up the outside steps. Suddenly he peered with a knife on the porch, coming at the office door in the large glass window of the nursery.” As they called it, which is where our school room, and where we had a stove, and we used to do our schoolwork. And the windows almost full length. Let’s see:
“I huddled by granny, and probably with John. Ma was in the office, totally cool, issuing, crisp, clear orders to us: no sign of fear or waiver.” I mean, she was like an ice cube. But I now know in much later years (she’s never said this), but there’s all sorts of guns in that corner; she could have taken him out instantly, with no hesitation.
RW: Like I said before we went on tape, “Don’t get between a mother and her kids.”
[Laughter]
WW: Tiger and her kids.
RW: Exactly.
WW: [Reading] Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 41
“Roscoe distracted himself, and nearly fell over the porch railing, which he lay on momentarily (I prayed he’d fall). Then off toward the bunkhouse he went, back down the steps, off toward the bunkhouse, 75 yards. John Gordon and one or two other men returned. Ma somehow contacted them; they caught Roscoe. What seemed like hours (maybe was), sheriff came with one or two deputies: maybe one of those three people. (The sheriff, see. )
The sheriff came with one or two deputies, one of them.” I think; and then I thought a deputy may have been one of our men, it says maybe one was one of our men.
“The sheriff’s car was parked right outside that gate and I could see it all clearly. Three of them brought Roscoe to the car in handcuffs, he was totally quiet. Suddenly, he tore loose, and streaked like a flash in a straight line for 30 yards, southwest, through the brush. No one could come near catching him.” My heart just stopped, period.
“Finally, three or four of the men cornered him in the brush by a fence 50-plus yards away.” And what it doesn’t say, is I remember he slipped when he jumped across the ditch, but it slowed him down. But anyway, they caught him there; a total, wild, fighting bobcat. Of course the knife wasn’t there, he had dropped it, remember, on the porch.
“Suddenly, he stopped and came easily and quietly back to the car. They tied him up more.” They chained his feet together.
RW: Hobbled him?
WW: They hobbled him completely. Later we heard what happened next.
“Later we heard that on the way to Halleck and Elko, on that dirt road. He totally exploded again, though all chained up. The car was nearly wrecked and off the road, and three of them had all they could do with them. He had struck at the back of the driver, without warning, with both feet – bringing him clear up, and going [makes grinding sound].”
Whew! [Laughs] John Gordon wasn’t in the car, I don’t think. I think probably it really was another deputy. John Gordon said that Roscoe had drank a bottle of rubbing alcohol. Well, that was sort of an exaggeration, that he drank some rubbing alcohol. And why wasn’t he in the Army? Because he also was insane, so he was 4F.
“My result in uncontrollable teeth-rattling, body-shaking terror at any sign of alcohol or an insane person gradually matured.” And this is a strange thing in a kid, but boy did it work on me. We go to Elko to pick up a chore boy that had been drinking – he was walking by the Commercial. And he was named Roy Jenson, and he was a hand. And Pa drove up beside him, Ma opened the window, John and I in the back. And, “Roy, you ready to go home?”
“I ain’t going back to that G-d ranch.” And he tipped his hat, whistled down the street, “I ain’t going back to that G-D ranch an those cows.” [Laughs] To milk them, you know, and stuff. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 42
And I just [makes teeth-chattering sound] – and Ma said, “Stop that! Quit that baby stuff,” she just got furious.
[38:28]
RW: But you had been traumatized.
WW: Well, post-traumatic stress.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: Is the fancy word –
RW: Sure.
WW: That is hurting us today; that word, not the fact. I totally understand it because I’ve had it about three times in my life – evolved into intense hatred, yet total calm. This is me – see my eyes [laughs]:
[Reading]
“This evolved into intense hatred, yet total calm, total confidence of being able to handle any of them, in any situation later. I would instantly (it seemed) revert completely into a totally cornered animal. A cocked mother tiger, hatred flickering through me, total disdain, yet fully alert and ready to go to any extreme. This was always true, whether friends, fraternity brothers, or total strangers in any environment.”
Did you hear that?
“The first exception to the hatred, and some of the disdainful part was at the Preston Taber Wright/Patricia wedding reception in 19-something, in Lamoille. I initiated and volunteered to drive a looped Carmen Fimiani home.” First time ever.
And Carmen was a great friend of mine – he was a tremendous hero in the Marine Corps. He’s totally brilliant; he’s one of my closest friends. He is the reason that Newmont acquired the TS Ranch, period. Period!
[41:03]
You’ve heard of McNamara – Secretary of Defense.
RW: Oh, yeah.
WW: Of course!
RW: Yeah.
WW: Well, he had two whiz kids: Roy Ash, and Tex Thornton: brilliant. They were the two whiz kids that did the thinking under him at the Pentagon, and brilliant characters. And Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 43
anyway, there’s Carmen hot dog so-and-so. Oh, what else can I say? Oh, he was first introduced me to a guy that I taught how to fly, and who became a tremendous big shot himself.
RW: Well this makes me think about – you’re talking about some memories as a child that have stayed with you, and affected you.
WW: All the way to today.
RW: To today. Let’s talk about – so this is something traumatic, and I would categorize not a hero, not a mentor, but at the same time, this Roscoe ended up mentoring you in a different way.
WW: Right.
RW: Let’s talk about a mentor, some of these old cowboys that were mentors: that you loved.
WW: Okay.
RW: You’ve got a whole list of them down there.
WW: Yeah.
RW: Who are some of those guys?
WW: Carmen would be fun to talk about some time. He remains a person I go to when I need to sort through things. And he told the president of Consolidated Gold Fields South Africa, who owned all this, who came to a board meeting but Carmen was the chairman. And he said, “Mr. Fimiani, I don’t like your attitude.”
And Carmen said, “Are you trying to scare me?” He said, “You can’t; I’ve been there. Shut up and sit down.” (And I was told this by the board of Newmont.) So that’s a mentor.
RW: Sure.
[43:25]
WW: In later life.
RW: Yeah.
WW: Now, so back to the dang, dirty alcohol. One of our Indians – this is part of the alcohol still, it has a tremendous effect. One of our wild, wild, wild Indians that I just – well, they killed a bunch of people. But anyway, he had a beautiful Indian wife – super Indian wife; she was so pretty – and she wanted him to go dancing. And Pa was there, it was Saturday night; he said, “No.” (He always got in fights, and caused trouble drinking, or fight, or a warrior.) Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 44
And he said, “No, I’m not going to go tonight, I just don’t feel like it – I’ve been stacking hay all day.” She said, “Ray, you’re not going to take me?”
“No,” he said.
“Okay.” She hadn’t been drinking; she took strychnine for porcupines, in front of the men. And she just spun a circle on the lawn with her feet while she foamed at the mouth until she died; made a mark in the lawn. Nobody could do anything with that.
RW: Hmm.
WW: Doesn’t that make a mark on you?
Well anyway, then the other thing that kept me, of course, from the alcohol was athletics (and my folks didn’t drink, and stuff).
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: But it took a long time, and I got lots and lots of alcohol friends, but the learned so – really good friends, and yet they learned my behavior. Walked into Risotti’s at Stanford (a big, famous bar), a lot of the football guys in there, with that incredible queen I was going with, with her pin at the time, stuck right here, you know.
RW: You pinned her?
WW: Yeah.
RW: Uh-huh.
[45:42]
WW: And walked into that bar and here’s some guys I really knew well, and big, tough guys. Oh, no – you already heard about, “Don’t screw around.”
RW: Right, exactly.
WW: And they didn’t ever; nobody ever did.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: And it then went into another story with a guy that threw a knife at me. And that was the beginning of knowing how to do everything. And it was the war. The ranch was huge, so Pa – and this begins many mentors – Pa would take 75 brasseros off the railroad train every spring, to do the haying, and replace (what I call) the “real” guys. And they couldn’t speak English, I couldn’t speak Spanish. I was – you know what I was. And I was the same cocky kid you’re looking at today, frankly. (You already heard how the attitude became that way.) Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 45
But anyway, I had one guy that just became an early favorite. Pa you see, he could speak perfect Spanish, I told you that yesterday. And this guy, among many that I befriended (they had to be my friends, who else?). Anyway, this one guy was Japanese (100% Japanese), and he was just this –
RW: Not too tough?
WW: Yeah, he was really little; little, and strong, and active, and quick. And I don’t think there’s any question on Earth that he was completely a Mexican national – oh, yeah. Well, I got to show you this one – it’s quicker than telling you. Oh, I can’t, okay.
RW: Well, we can undo you [mic].
WW: No; no, no.
RW: And you can stand up.
WW: I want to finish this story. So he – in the bottom of that same bunkhouse was a rock room (it’s two-stories on the back, on the front it’s one) [laughs].
[48:10]
RW: Right, right; sloping.
WW: And he’s down there. And they’re working, and they’re working. But this guy (the Japanese guy that I like so much) is lying on his bed, sick. And he’s lying on his bed, completely flat, over in – I think it’s – I measured it. I took an archaeologist friend of mine from the ranch, and measured, and it’s written somewhere, exactly the distance. But I think it was 14 feet – I think it was 14 feet in a straight line across there, to his feet over there.
And he’s a line, with his head in the corner, and on the walls over here. See, there’s a straight wall – he’s lying – I came in from outside, he’s lying in this corner, a big stone wall (thick wall), he’s lying in his corner on his bunk, and he’s got a pillow behind his head. And he’s just lying here, like this, full-length. And I came in, sauntered in there, and began to fool around, and visit with him; we couldn’t understand a word. And over there in that stone wall there was a little, teeny wooden locker, built into the wall. Probably had kind of a locker this deep, this wide; had a little latch on it, nicely framed up.
And anyway, I walked over like this, I walked over and I just reached down to that little latch, to flip it, to open the door. And thunk! –
[50:18]
RW: You were off that –
WW: Just, just right there – Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 46
RW: Uh-huh?
WW: Just right in the wood, that close, and I got the knife and I showed the FBI guy (my friend, who incidentally was the only friend that Mary had to [laughing] sit with yesterday in one of these). But anyway, it went in about that far, I was thrown so hard; it just embedded itself deeply. And I turned around – it didn’t even cross my mind he wanted to hurt me, and he didn’t.
RW: No.
WW: He had no intent.
RW: He just didn’t want you opening it up.
WW: No, guess why? Did they have liquor in there? [Laughs] I’ll never know; he didn’t want me to open it.
RW: Right.
WW: And anyway, he just immediately – I didn’t even see the move – I just, “Thunk!” [Laughing] “Holy Judas!” And I turned around and looked at him, and he just was lying back down the same way, and he laughed.
Well, so the whole focus of my life – how do I get that knife? (I wish I had Roscoe Worely’s), but how do I get that knife? And so, but anyway, he and I really were good friends. These guys – even then, as a kid – you could trust me.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: I don’t point fingers. Okay, so “How do I get that knife?” Well anyway, I worked desperately on that. “Are there any others? Do any of the other guys have them? And how do you use them?” Uh-oh, that’s the beginning of trouble.
Well, and so it went from there – and so pretty soon – well, “So and so has one. He was abandon in Mexico; he was a very bad guy, and he’s got one.” And it’s homemade, it’s identical shape as the one I got – I’ve got them both – and it’s only this long.
RW: Maybe about nine inches?
WW: The blade is only about like that –
RW: Okay.
WW: You wouldn’t be able to throw it very far.
[52:55]
RW: Um-hmm. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 47
WW: And it’s sort of flimsy. The other one is very super stiff; I mean, it the real McCoy – about like that.
RW: Uh-huh?
WW: What they were – the Mexicans made their version of what they thought was the copy of Jim Bowie’s knife.
RW: Okay.
WW: So this one guy, this bad guy – I still remember him. He had his clothes off one day when I was sitting there, and that’s the first place I saw bullet holes: three of them. Three of them, and obviously it didn’t kill him.
RW: Right.
WW: But three bullet holes in this part of his body.
RW: Right – his chest and stomach area?
WW: No, I don’t think one went through the ribs.
RW: Oh, so down lower in his stomach?
WW: Somehow he survived this.
RW: Wow, that’s amazing!
WW: They were completely round.
RW: Uh-huh?
WW: They had big scar tissue. Anyway, which layer served him to recognize him. But anyway, and then one other finally got one from another guy. And somehow they’d worked together to get these knives to me – and it was a banana knife. Do you know what they look like?
RW: Huh-uh, I don’t.
WW: These are pretty homemade type things: they’ve got bone handles, they fold into a curve, like this, and they have a hook blade. And you can open them, usually with a homemade, little thing you pull out, and get the blade, and it locks the blade open. And you cut bananas with them.
RW: Oh, okay.
WW: You cut lumps of bananas.
RW: Got you. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 48
WW: So it’s an “S”.
RW: Yeah.
WW: It’s curved this way, and that way. And when you shut it, it’s just the “s”.
RW: Oh, the lower part of the “s”?
WW: Yeah, and it’s about this long overall; it’s about this long.
RW: Maybe a –
WW: Not a foot, no, no, no.
RW: Not a foot?
WW: Not that long. Anyway, think of that.
Okay, so here’s the beginning of my coaching to be cuchillero, which is – a serape is around here; or in their case, often just a sombrero, “Where’s the knife, baby? Where’s your eyes?”
And then with the banana knife, of course, you can have it in your hand like this, but it’s open – same game – like that, anywhere, you know (but not so much forward, it’s more close to a person, you know).
RW: Uh-huh.
WW: You’re having a fight with him, you just rip him open with it. And so I just went on, and on, and on, and on, and on – confidence grew, and grew, and grew, and grew until I used to teach that stuff to very serious people: how to kill a person with a knife, quick, and where to get them, and why.
And like (the FBI guy), he said – he and I trained together on a SWAT team once, and he just had this abnormal fear of knives – a professional FBI guy! He’s done everything, he’s dealt with everybody, but he has this fear of knives: that’s normal, because you and I have cut our finger on a piece of paper or a knife, we haven’t been shot – so you’re scared of knives. [Laughs] That’s enough of that story.
RW: [Laughs] Now I’d like to –
WW: Now please put me right back where you want.
RW: Well, let me just give you an update on time: it’s noon.
WW: Okay.
RW: And I told my helper that’s back at the Gathering (where I’m working), that I would try to be back there 12:30 or 1:00. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 49
WW: Okay, good.
RW: So, and you probably, you know, probably need lunch and stuff. So let’s maybe focus on a few, key stories; and then we can add some of these other ones back in the transcript, when I send it to you.
[57:33]
WW: Mentors –
RW: Yeah, mentors.
WW: Are enormous.
RW: I’d like to know a little bit about some mentors, and I’d like to know about your family’s ranch, and if we have time, a little bit about the flying.
WW: Why don’t I skip through real quick to – so you have the – no, I don’t need to, you’ve got it.
RW: And I can just type it in.
What Bill’s talking about (I’m talking to the tape recorder now), what you’re talking about is, you’ve written down some stories that I can take, and add them to the transcript.
WW: Yes.
RW: Okay.
WW: Is that okay?
RW: Sounds perfect.
WW: That tells how he got the ranch.
RW: Okay, then we don’t need to do that.
WW: There’s a piece in there that isn’t in there, but it’s in there.
RW: Okay, well I’ll add this. When we’re finished up you can show me where – you know, I’ll add them.
WW: Aren’t they over here?
RW: Yeah, they’re right here, and I’ll add them.
WW: Let’s make dang sure. [Flipping through papers] This doesn’t have any underlining, I’m sorry to say. I need to look at this before you have it anyway, for a second – Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 50
RW: Sure.
WW: Just to double check it. I want to make sure the pages are there. This is going to help you so much. Now this is what we are going to talk about a little bit, sometime before you take it. [Flipping through papers] There’s the “Zebra Dun.” Okay, yeah; okay, you’re going to know a terrible lot from this.
RW: What I’ll plan on doing, is I’ll add this to the transcript. I’ll put it in a way that it’s not reflected that it came from the actual interview, but it’s something that you wrote about your father, and then we can go through that. So that’s what you’re saying, we don’t need to maybe go through that.
WW: And this, you see, is my mother’s memorial service.
[60:09]
RW: Oh, lovely.
WW: And it explains – I better just check the pages; it’s a crazy story. Boy, that was tough: whew.
RW: I bet.
WW: I’ve done them since.
RW: So those are those – I’m going to put them in here so I keep them.
WW: The only – this is the ranch standards, which tells a great deal –
RW: Oh, yeah! You were talking about that; may I have that, and add it too?
WW: Yes.
RW: Thank you.
WW: And the men at the ranch, even today, have this with the understanding that they’re supposed to add to it.
RW: Okay.
WW: If they have good ideas.
RW: Who started this?
WW: Constructive criticism.
RW: Right. Who started these ranch rules?
WW: Started what? Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 51
RW: Who created this? Who began this? Was this your dad, or you?
WW: My son, John discovered a thing handwritten by me many, many, many years ago, after I was running the company.
RW: Okay, so you started this?
WW: And this, you see, was 12-14-03 – he had it done on time – not rules, but ideas we’ve heard before, some are rules.
RW: And this is John typing these things that he’s found, that you wrote?
WW: He found it –
RW: And then things, did he add to it?
WW: He didn’t say much, he just told me he found this thing.
RW: Uh-huh.
[62:10]
WW: And I looked it up, and I copied it. Meanwhile, what this was in this state – I mean, that was back in the – when I wrote those, it must have been early ‘60s, or something.
RW: Okay.
WW: But I’ve always loved that type of stuff. This was just a family meeting, and they had asked me to have it typed and give it to them by a certain date. All I did, see, was I just pulled that thing John had got out –
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: Handwritten.
RW: So the family –
WW: And copied.
RW: So a family meeting between you and your kids?
WW: No, our whole family.
RW: Your whole family? Like your brother’s family?
WW: It would be spouses, and everybody – we tried to have these meetings.
RW: I see. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 52
WW: The company: the whatever we think we are.
RW: Okay, can I have that as a copy?
WW: Yeah!
RW: Thank you.
WW: You can keep both of them with no questions. If I had a chance, in my briefcase I have a colored thing, and I’d underline a couple things, big deal. But on Pa (WBW), I don’t want that to leave until I explain –
RW: Okay.
WW: The handwritten part.
RW: Okay. Well now we don’t have to – we know that the ranch was here.
WW: Now, we can skip it.
RW: We can skip it; we can talk about mentors, and a little bit about you, and the flying, and some of the things.
WW: Well, [laughs] you keep reaching for flying. But that’s all in this stuff, the triggers.
The mentors – the heart of it; and a lot of this is with Cliff. I’ve been lucky all my life, but if there was anything that was tremendously influential, it was being so fortunate to be born in 1930, and grew up in the Depression, and yet never lacked for food. I had everything I wanted: I had horses, I had dogs, I had a brother, I had family. I wasn’t very experienced much around other kids (although gradually Balboa began to make a difference – southern California). Because I outgrew the hay fever, see, not the ocean.
[64:43]
So, anyway, that’s why that sequence for me is those four things: the ranch, the ocean, the sky, the mountains.
So what the Depression brought were these people that needed work. And the way Pa treated them, of course, made a mark the way he taught me. But there were two people that I use as the examples of the very best, and the very worst. Now, the best was Perry Riggons.
RW: How do you spell his last name?
WW: R-I-G-G-O-N-S; and there’s a picture of him in the car. And the best was Perry Riggons; I didn’t have time to find a picture I have of the worst – and maybe they weren’t the worst, because you don’t know what you don’t know. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 53
But Perry Riggons was – we didn’t have a big brother – he was everything I wanted to be: he was real good looking; he was real strong, good looking, charismatic, friendly, super confident (but only in a nice way). Later I saw the hard side of him; he had a side as tough as that cabinet of steel. But he could ride anything you could saddle up, you know. I mean, boy, he was a bronc rider, and a cowboy.
Now this is the point: military business life – we all know what exec is: the executive officer. When the captain goes down, he takes over (or the commanding officer, or the head of the company), he takes over: he’s the next one that steps in and runs everything. Sometimes, even better than the captain did if he’s exceptional.
[67:25]
Well anyway, this was the finest example of an executive officer I have ever, ever known. Think that over. He had a sixth grade education, period. Well, Perry Riggons. And then the other one was – [laughing] I started to say Roscoe Worley.
RW: [Laughs]
WW: You know, incidentally on the post-traumatic bit – I wouldn’t even tell that story for years. I mean, I say “years” I bet it wasn’t years; you know, a long time.
RW: Yeah.
WW: Almost like I forgot it [makes clicking sound].
RW: Right.
WW: And then good, old [laughs] Charlie Carter – talk about nice looking (smaller); smaller, real nice looking, real bright, charismatic, curly, black hair. I’ve got a picture of me standing at the barn with his hand on my shoulder, and I’m what – eight or nine years old, you know, and a cowboy standing behind me – sure wasn’t a cowboy!
But anyway, he sure knew about equipment and stuff, you know, he was not a mechanic. His mother (I know this, these are facts) – his mother owned a small hotel in Boston. And with a partner, he went on a two-guy crime spree, successfully across the United States, and was not caught until Santa Barbara (and that’s old Highway 1).
[69:28]
And he and his buddy pulled out of a service station there, and they didn’t pay for the gas, of course (of course), and they’re in a stolen car, and they roared out. Finally, the word had caught up with them. And whoever the people were: the sheriffs, the police, had a huge road block on that highway, right out in Santa Barbara; and they gunned him down because he came out fighting. And they shot him right through here. And he made the cops fall in love with him, because he lay there like this, holes through here. You would have never got me, but you got my gun arm. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 54
[Laughter]
That makes a cop love you. Sheriff Jess Harris – the airport is named for (Elko).
RW: Yeah, I’ve seen that sign.
WW: Yeah. Well, Jeff Harris and I knew each other in many, many, many different ways. And I still have a badge he gave me, “Deputy No. 13” [laughs].
RW: [Laughs]
WW: But anyway, he told me one thing that certainly was true, he said, “Charlie Carter was the most dangerous human I ever faced.” Well, so here’s Charlie Carter.
RW: So how did you and Charlie Carter’s paths cross?
WW: Well, you know Roscoe Worley?
RW: Yeah.
WW: Guess who showed up as a chore boy?
RW: He’s the next chore boy?
WW: No, he showed up as a chore boy, and we had – just like Roscoe (with Roscoe I was older – Charlie came first) –
RW: Okay. But Charlie was a chore boy?
WW: Yeah. He came as a chore boy, he couldn’t do anything else.
RW: Is this before his crime spree or after?
WW: No, no! I told you that story before they ever heard of him.
RW: Okay.
WW: He went to the pen.
RW: And then this is after the pen, when he comes to the people –
[71:39]
WW: Yeah. And he came out of the pen on parole (in those days) to Pa; Pa knew his whole story.
RW: Okay.
WW: You’ve got to know this guy, Pa, to understand (and Ma too). Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 55
And anyway, so here’s good, old Charlie; and what a fun guy. And so little John and I, probably, what – seven, eight, nine, ten – as we went along. We had the chores with him, we ha to help him with the wood (carry the wood, and chop the wood, and bring the wood, and put it in the house). And he’d watch the kids when the folks weren’t around, and everything, you know. And he did real good.
I do remember once coming home from Elko in the car at the 71, and he had –
You okay?
RW: Yeah, I’m just going to quickly text her that I’m still here. You keep going, I’m good. I just want her to know. [Referring to work associate at the Cowboy Poetry Gathering that Randy Williams will take over for later in the day.]
WW: And he had tipped one of the early tractors (three-wheeled John Deere), he had driven it off the edge of the road, and tipped it over.
RW: That’s not good.
WW: That wasn’t good. Anyway, I heard this and saw this with my own eyes – the next go around, he came to my folks (he came to Pa, Christmas), he said, “My record’s good, I’ve got a lot of money that they gave me when I was let out of the pen (that I earned in the pen). And I’ve earned my money here; can I go home and visit my mother?”
RW: Back to Boston?
WW: For Christmas. And I heard him say, I heard Pa say, “Okay, but just remember, behave yourself.” And I remember very shortly afterwards that – remember I emphasized that we didn’t have any money (hardly). I mean, Pa got salary. And he marched into Ma’s little dinette, kitchenette upstairs, on the top floor. And he said, “Lynn, Charlie’s in jail in Denver, and I’m going back to see why.”
[74:12]
I was there when he came home. He said – he just laughed – he said, “Charlie’s hopeless.” He said, “I went to the jail, and I asked him how come he took those suitcases? And he said, ‘I made a terrible mistake – I thought one of them was full of watches.’” But he didn’t tell what he did to get them.
He went to the airport, and he hi-jacked a cab, and he grabbed the driver (and it’s below zero in Denver), and he drove him out into a furrowed field, tied him hand and foot, and left him in the furrowed field at night. And the guy lost his legs from the middle of the calves, down.
Then he went to the airport, and he either captured two stewardesses, or two – anyway, two women and the suitcases. And he took them somewhere in the cabby – he happily took them somewhere, got rid of them, had the two suitcases. Well, next stop: Alcatraz. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 56
So here is the kid at Stanford (oh, he kept in touch with family, steadily), and he would always say the same thing; Christmas cards Ma kept (she’d always write to him). He always said the same thing, “This place would make a good man go bad.” Those words; he’d always say that. “Help me get out of here.” And they’d laugh.
I mean, he taught John and I things you don’t teach kids, you know. Those little kids – he was a second-story specialist burglary.
RW: Hmm.
WW: And my mother even likes all these stories – I don’t know if he told her this one: he told us about getting caught on his bed in the second story in Las Vegas, for newlyweds all night. And then (little kids), “Um-hmm.” And then Ma liked one of the stories though. They totally surrounded a hotel in Las Vegas (different in those days). And they had him cornered. But they didn’t question this poor, old crippled lady, with the hairy legs –
RW: [Laughing]
[76:54]
WW: That came walking out through the lines.
So anyway, here I am at Stanford, and I’m – how do I explain the way I am? It was after Stanford, I was back at the ranch; I was back at the ranch and I wanted to be sure that I flew in the Navy, and continued my training. And commanding officer, Oakland Naval Air Station flew a two-engine bomber to Elko and picked me up, and took me down.
And like I say, I mean, I’m going to be respectful, but I’ve always been the way I am. And we had a wonderful time, and we were having dinner at his house, and he was talking. And he was talking about some of his favorite stuff (he was one of those old, famous carrier captains during the war. But anyway, he said that he often played golf with the warden of Alcatraz! [Laughs] He said –
RW: And your mind starts spinning.
WW: No, not too bad at the time. He just said, “Yeah.” And then he said, -- guess what he said? The same words: he said, “The warden,” he said, “the warden – “
I said, “Yeah, you know, such and such.” And he said, “The warden said to me that there are some guys” (the captain said this very self-confidently) he said, “The warden told me there are some guys up there that really shouldn’t be there.”
[Laughing] And I – instantly got my attention. And the captain said, “He said of this one guy,” (and he described Charlie vividly). And he said, “He is such a neat guy, that my wife and I have gone to the (whatever it is) and requested that he be made our house boy on Alcatraz.”
[79:19] Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 57
I said [laughing], “What’s his name?” And Captain Weston – I told Captain a story (Captain Weston). And he said, “I’ll ask him.” Well Captain Weston called me in just a very short time when they got us back at Stanford, or something. And he called me, and he said, “His name is Charlie Carter, and he’s not going to be a houseboy.”
RW: [Laughs]
WW: I’m married, I’m at the ranch; the door opens, we’re out there at that lonely ranch. I’m sitting there with Pa, and there’s a couch (the house that Preston lives in now), there’s a couch, and many a people have sat on that couch. And knock, knock, and here comes this car, and here’s Charlie: a little mustache. And he walked in, he looks older, and he’s got the two worst-looking people, right to this day, I have ever seen. A woman that’s this big around, her glasses are that thick [makes groaning sound]; and he’s got this weird guy with him.
And Pa’s first words, “Charlie, what are you doing here?” He said, “We knew, he had kept touch.”
RW: Um-hmm?
WW: He had a trading post with a partner in Las Vegas, New Mexico. “Why aren’t you there?”
“Well everybody needs a vacation: my partner’s taking care of it; that’s what you have partners for.”
“That car you’re driving isn’t stolen, is it?”
He flicked the keys, like this, “Oh, no; of course not. And these are so and so.”
And Ma took those three people (now days, for drugs, you wouldn’t – but remember, even the criminal world has a code), and she took those three people all through her new house there, at the ranch (that big house). And they left, and they were gone for – I’d say two days, three days – I think four days. And the FBI showed up and said, “Have you seen Charlie?”
“Yes.”
“Well, we can’t find him. We’ve got an all-points bulletin, all states.” But most wanted: I mean this boy is serious. “We found his car – it was parked right there on Idaho Street.”
RW: Um-hmm. Here in Elko.
WW: By the courthouse.
RW: Okay.
[82:03] Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 58
WW: And it was stolen. So we impounded it across the street, where it used to be Warren Motor Company.
RW: Yeah.
WW: And he said, “We had it for a couple of days, and all of a sudden this freaky guy walked into the shop, and he said, ‘I don’t know anything about that car, but you got my razor in it.’” So he said, “We’ve got those two, but we haven’t got Charlie.” The ambushes caught him, guess where? Buhl, Idaho.
RW: [Chuckles]
WW: And they put him in the jail in Buhl, and the sheriff – and I don’t know the time he spent there, not more than a day or two – and the sheriff told the people there, he said, “Okay, I’ll stay here tonight, and you don’t need to worry; I got control.” They came to the jail in the morning, sheriff’s car was gone, sheriff was inside the jail, locked in (locked in the cell), and in the middle of the round table there was a note, with something like this stuck in, “See ya later, baby!” And on, and on the stories go.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: Because he re-surfaced; his weakness was returning to places, dressed to the nines: best-dressed guy in the hotel, Stockmen’s Hotel. Boy, he was gambling away, and had lots of money. And they knew he was there: Jess Harris (the sheriff), everybody surrounded the place. And they ran out there, the FBI – they all had him cornered – and they ran up behind him and grabbed him (he’s terrible strong).
And he just exploded screaming, “Help! Help, these people are trying to rob me.” Bam! Out the door, he got away! Streaked out onto the street, spun around on that curb, you know, spun around on that curve, and one of the guys chasing him – I think Sheriff Harris thought it was an FBI guy – one of the guys chasing him kicked his hand, and knocked the gun away.
[84:42]
Years later, sitting there in the living room, and Pa was still alive (he died in ’66), “Elko Daily Free Press” – little, bitty thing, “Charles Carter, Age 62,” (I think it said, or something), “is found in a line in a furrow, in a below zero weather, in Mindon, Nevada, where he had used a nail and carved out of the jail. And we’ve got him; we caught him.”
And Pa said to me, “That’s got to be him.”
That’s the last any of us ever heard [laughs].
RW: You have had so many interesting people in your life.
WW: Yeah, and they go on and on. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 59
RW: Yeah. The pendulum swings high and low.
WW: And I’d love to tell you more, because mentors – I’d be nobody except for my mentors. And I was born a hero-worshipper, and I’ve always had heroes. I’ve always been a dreamer. I wanted to be good, I wanted to be strong, I wanted to be tough, I wanted to be brave – I wanted to do stuff. “They call me a dreamer; and maybe I am. Of faraway places, maybe Siam.” You know that type of stuff.
RW: Um-hmm. WW: The wanderlust is in me, and my soul is in Coffey [not sure which city you are referencing?].
And Perry Riggons is so big in my life, that when we get a chance, that’s got to be a critical series: Perry Riggons. And I just can’t owe him more. And Hilary; on and on, and on. Ray Analo[??]: killed three people. Ray Analo taught me so many things; I spoke at his service when he died: told the true story of his life, in front of the whole audience. My daughter-in-law, Patricia, is sitting in the front row, and here’s a family of Ray Analo sitting here, here is Ray (I mean, Ray isn’t there) [laughs].
[87:25]
And he died working for us. And anyway, I could see Patricia just – shutter.
RW: Cringing a little bit?
WW: Yeah, because –
RW: Because you’re saying the truth?
WW: Yeah, because I’m going to tell the whole truth.
RW: Right, right.
WW: Why did he kill them?
RW: Yeah.
WW: Of course, it’s alcohol.
RW: Well, I’m thinking you know, it’s about – I’m looking at my watch, and your watch – and it’s 12:36. And how does this sound – I would like to ask you one more question –
WW: Okay.
RW: And then –
WW: And I’ll try and just stay with it. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 60
RW: Finish for today, and then I will get this transcribed, send it back to you. And then we’ll filter in the things you’ve given me.
WW: Yeah.
RW: And then we’ll go from there, and make some plans for the future.
WW: Let’s see if you can’t schedule me to come to Logan.
RW: That would be awesome.
WW: And make a trade – I don’t mean – so that I get to have (not more than four hours ever) to have to do this.
RW: Sure.
WW: Even though I love it. And the other four hours, I do what I do.
RW: Sounds good, let’s do that.
WW: And like, it would be nice if I could ski or do stuff like that. So ask me.
RW: Okay.
WW: [Laughing] If you can remember! You’re like me.
RW: No, I’m trying to phrase it. In your life, what is – of all you’ve learned, when you teach your kids, what are some of the philosophies that you pass on?
WW: You’re leaving at four? I’m not talking for a minute. You’re leaving at four – I think those are written pretty carefully.
RW: Okay, in those rules?
[89:28]
WW: No, not all of them, but lots of them are there. But my life – yeah [claps], I do have something I’m going to give you, and I think I’ve got a copy in Elko. I’ll get it to you.
I said it to you yesterday, “To everybody, somebody first.” And the more you know about the other person, the better off you are: whether he be enemy, friend, teammate – different everything. And a lot of that philosophy is in that –
RW: Okay.
WW: Memorial service.
RW: Okay, um-hmm: to your mother? Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 61
WW: Yeah.
RW: Okay.
WW: But it’s be respectful of everybody; that doesn’t mean you don’t react instantly, if you have to. Yeah, you’re respectful, you’re done baby – you know. I mean, I’m really capable of some – can make things happen pretty fast.
But I love this one – this is one of mine: get up in the morning cheerful, no matter what happened.
RW: Um-hmm?
WW: Because the sun also rises. And what did that to me was my wife – I used her. And what triggered that, made it real (I’ve always thought that) – but what triggered me was I noticed it that morning that Pa died: the sun came up, and I could see the cowboys coming along the fence, on their horses.
[91:40]
But anyway, me and Ray Analo had to go get him, (and another guy). But Victoria said, “What should I teach my kids? How would you answer that, real quick?” I couldn’t think. And then suddenly I said, “Get up in the morning cheerful, like your mom.”
And the way that worked was that we had – it was summer, it was a huge hay year, we had a big hay crew. A lot of those people are college (or whatever) guys, that disappear. We had these humongous rainstorms, just humongous; people were killed on the freeway hitting piles of hail, and it would be day after day. My brother, in jet fighter, was at 40,000, over the ranch, and he was still flying through the tops at this particular time.
And it kept happening, and meanwhile I’ve got all this hay to do. We can’t get it, it keeps coming and wrecking the hay, it’s a little droopy. So what do we do? “Let’s go climb Pilot Peak.” (Which is that peak above the salt flats, remember?) “Okay, let’s go climb Pilot Peak.”
“Okay.” [Laughs]
I’ve got a bunch of yo-yos, I’ve got – let’s see, two Cannons (names are Cannon), two Stanford – two young guys who were haying for me, stackers: big, tough, strong, well-built athletes (one All American, actually in – what’s the All American in? No, no; anyway, that’s beside the point; one of those guys made All America, not in football. I had those two guys.) And, I had two kids: Preston, who was (had to be, whatever he was), and John, who was only nine.
[94:08]
RW: These are your two boys? Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 62
WW: Huh?
RW: John and Preston are your boys?
WW: Yeah, and John is the youngest (Bill wasn’t there, he was going somewhere), and of course, Mary. Well anyway, she took the Land Rover, and drove to the northwest corner of Pilot, where they specialize in raising drugs (and I knew that even then), and it made me a little nervous. Meanwhile I use the supercut to go there, and find exactly where we would climb and get it figured. I wanted to go clear to the top, and clear to the, down the side, and meet her.
And so I landed the airplane, and a druggie came down – I’m serious about that – he came down and visited with me, and I said, “Watch my airplane.” And I tied the plane down, took our sleeping bags, hiked right above his place. And right at the foot at the steep, and the rain started to – God, it just came like a bear! Hail, and rain, and we’re in our sleeping bags, and I’m just being, just thinking, “Oh my God! I was tired anyway; I was totally worn out, and now this?” [Laughs] Okay.
And so here was this incredible female specimen, over there probably, as far as across the – we sort of had a – you know, you make a hole for your sleeping bag, to make it cozy, in the brush, on the cow trailer, or something. And she was in this hole, and she had just pajamas thing – nightie you can see through, you know. And this figure is just beyond description. And she stands up fully, like this, you know, and she was laughing, and her hair was just like this. Man, she said, “I feel like I just slept in a tub all night, ha, ha, ha.” You know what I wanted to do? Kill her!
[Laughter]
[96:27]
And it was an incredible hike, and we did the whole deal. And we found the – thanks to Preston – it’s one mile across the top, and you climb boulders that are bigger than you can believe are possible. And around them, and over them, endless rock slides; and there are a lot of neat things up there. And Mary and I have climbed these places together in the past (she never climbed Pilot). It’s true, she didn’t have to climb it; she had to bring the Land Rover around, to pick us up at the south end. But no, no – she would have been identical, even if she was going to climb – don’t kid yourself.
And it caught us on top with terrible lightening and storms, but we made it; we had slickers, and we make it, obviously. And we got to the end, and we were going down. And if you go to Wendover, and look at Pilot – on the south end (facing south), you’ll see right close to the tippy, tippy top, there’s a little dip like this: just a little dip in the mountain. And in there, you can barely see, usually, just little spots, little trees – field glasses you can see them.
And here comes this young kid (real young). Preston, and John of course, and Preston stopped in that place, like Preston is – you don’t know him, do you? [Laughing] Oh, my gosh. He stood like this, completely quiet and he said, “That’s a Bristlecone.” And he Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 63
said, “There’s four of them.” (And there were.) And later I told the United States about them, you know, the Forest Service – they’d never known that before; that they were up there. They knew there were some on Pearl Peak –
RW: Um-hmm.
[98:43]
WW: But they didn’t know they were there. Isn’t that neat?
RW: That’s very neat. A little naturalist!
WW: [Laughing] Oh yeah. The family is that way. But I would recognize them now, I think.
RW: Uh-huh.
WW: But I’m not near as good as him. But I thought that’s very, very, very important. And I have to say it to myself – I get sour. And one more little story – and I don’t mind saying it here. This was this year. You never want to complain when you’ve had such a good life, but the better you’ve had it, the more you regret losing pieces.
And anyway, I was flying, and I was flying in the mountains, and it was a hot day. And the air was bad – and that’s hairy; it’s hard work, it was this summer. And I landed, and came back to Mula Vista. I’d been flying for a long time, I think with a cowboy, and something – of course, you’ve got to do it right, you don’t want to be dead. And it was so unpleasant in the Super Cub because the wings are straight, instead of this.
RW: Hmm.
WW: So, instead of rolling – that’s why airplanes have that thing on the wing – instead of rolling with the bumps, they go, “Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk.” And it just drives you batty. It’s as if you fell into a bad roll.
And I landed at the ranch, and I was sitting in the plane, trying to get out –
[Phone ringing]
I think I better let it ring for a minute, okay? Good. But I think this should be recorded.
RW: It’s on.
[100:38]
WW: Oh, and John (who was running the crew in the field) –
RW: Your son?
WW: He flies too, you know, he was an ag pilot, and stuff like I was once. And he came rushing up, and he said, “Dad, would you go to Twin Falls, and pick up some parts?” Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 64
And I said, “Well, I am just dying – I’m going to have something to eat, and something to drink. I’ve got to take a break.” And you know, the middle of the day it’s the worst – say from two to four, is the very worst of all: turbulence, and the heat, and everything.
So I went up the hill, and I made the sad mistake of walking in the house, and my wife was sitting there, and I said – I just said, “[Groans] Oh, I can’t do that, I just can’t.”
And she never jumps on me; she did. She said, “Listen, you quit that complaining.” (She doesn’t talk like that to me.) “You quit that complaining! Don’t you realize that they are still able to ask you to do those things?” Whew! Boy, I gulped my food, and boy I was in Twin Falls, and I was in a good mood! And I got home that night with the parts, right on time.
I think that’s terribly important.
RW: It is, very important.
WW: That’s all.
RW: Thank you.
[End part 2 of 2 – 102:24]

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Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 1
RANCH FAMILY DOCUMENTATION PROJECT
TRANSCRIPTION COVER SHEET
Interviewee: William Wright
Place of Interview: Western Folklife Center, Elko, Nevada
Date of Interview: February 3 and 4, 2012
Interviewer: Randy Williams
Recordist: Randy Williams
Recording Equipment: Marantz digital recorder: Model no.: PMD660;
Shure omnidirectional microphone: Model no.: MX 183
Transcription Equipment: Power Player Transcription Software: Executive Communication Systems with foot pedal
Transcribed by: Susan Gross
Transcript Proofed by: 17 April 2012;
Brief Description of Contents: Mr. William Wright talks about his many life experiences, including those centered on ranching, flying, and his military years, as well as childhood memories, and people and events that influenced his life.
Reference: RW = Randy Williams (Interviewer)
WW = William Wright (Interviewee)
NOTE: Interjections during pauses or transitions in dialogue such as “uh” and starts and stops in conversations are not included in transcribed. All additions to transcript are noted with brackets.
TAPE TRANSCRIPTION
[Part 1 of 2 – 00:01]
RW: Okay, it is the third of February 2012 and I’m here with Mr. Bill Wright, at the Pioneer Hotel, at the Western Folklife Center (on the third floor). We’re going to talk about ranching, ranching families.
Mr. Wright, what is your full name, and your birthday? Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 2
WW: William Bleecker Wright, Jr.
RW: Okay, how do you spell “Bleecker”?
WW: [Laughing] I knew you’d ask that; B-L-E-E-C-K-E-R.
RW: Okay.
WW: Of course you asked that [laughs].
RW: Yeah, I need to know that. So we were just talking off tape a little bit about meeting your wife, but before we get to that, I’m curious about – you’re here, in Elko County, and it sounds like you’ve been here a long time; were your parents from Elko County?
WW: Yes. And I think maybe that’s where the relations start, we get a chance to do that other, and we’d have fun with that story, about my wife.
RW: Yeah, we’ll get to that.
WW: But for now –
RW: But let’s get to you being born, and all that good stuff.
WW: That’s what I’d like to, that’s how I thought we would start. Now don’t let that get lost.
RW: We won’t.
WW: Yeah; oh, goody-good!
RW: If you would like to eat, you just eat – we can talk and eat.
WW: Okay, shut it off for a sec.
RW: Okay, we’ll just put it on pause.
WW: Yeah.
RW: There we go.
WW: I don’t choke to death when I’m talking.
[Stop and start recording]
[01:49]
RW: Okay, I can hear myself. So we just turned it off for a second. So when’s your birthday? You may have told me –
WW: It’s turned on now isn’t it? Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 3
RW: It is; I just turned it back on.
WW: Good. It’s on August 29, 1930.
RW: 1930? I’m curious about your family – your parents and –
WW: I’ll give you that whole thing.
RW: Yeah, I’d love to hear it.
WW: I’ll expand all I can on that, because I love that.
RW: Okay.
WW: It was – well, I’ll have to keep backing up, though, with my grandparents and parents. I’ll start with me and try and go from there.
Pa was the manager (we owned nothing); he was the manager of a giant ranch out in the same area where we are today: sixty-five miles long (approximately) – I’ve written this – about 25 miles wide. And in those days, of course, it was a very (the Depression) labor-intensive in those days. Everything was, you know –
RW: Sure.
WW: Now Ma was a southern California girl (actually, I think born in Philadelphia in 1904). Pa was born in Los Angeles in 1895.
RW: What were their names?
WW: His name is William B. Wright (William Bleecker Wright); her name was Linda Mackellar Schwartz (S-C-H-W-A-R-T-Z).
[03:56]
But anyway, (and I’ll go back to that whenever you want) but me – I was the first kid, and so – well, they married in 1928, I think, Sierra Madre, California. And anyway, I was the first kid, so she went home to Sierra Madre to have me. So I was born in Pasadena Hospital.
RW: But your dad was out here by then?
WW: Yeah, well yeah. Because they – this was his business.
RW: Okay; so he’s managing a ranch, or he’s working on a big ranch out here –
WW: A huge one.
RW: What was the name of that ranch? Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 4
WW: It was the old 7S – we called the whole outfit the 71 Ranch. Now, the 71 Ranch is just one of the many ranches that make up this completely contiguous thing.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: And I grew up, and the iron was the 7 lazy S. And we, of course, like you sort of match it with your own family – we took it as ours, “That’s ours.”
And the way that they got together was that his mother lived across the street (in those days) in Sierra Madre, from the Schwartz’s. And he went over to see the incredibly beautiful sister of hers (I guess there were nine kid, see; yeah, because one died).
RW: So these are the Schwartz’s your dad went over to see?
WW: These are the Schwartz’s.
[06:01]
RW: Okay.
WW: And these are my Grandmother Schwartz’s kids (my uncles and aunts). And he went over to see her, and he just saw my mother (who was much younger, etc., etc.), and paid no attention. Well later, when she was 16 years old, she was spectacular too, actually. And a boyfriend picked her up, in apparently a convertible (even in those days – obviously somebody with a lot of money) picked her up, took her to the end of a little street, and then [makes engine noise] went right through the stop sign at the Boulevard stop, and [makes grinding sound] just wiped the bottom of her face off.
RW: Oh, no!
WW: Destroyed the jaw –
RW: Oh.
WW: Smashed the teeth, just everything. And you can imagine, a real good-looking girl, what that does – 16 years old. Well anyway, she recovered [laughs].
But anyway, a long time later his mother, who was very much of a horse lady, (and apparently had been a real good-looking girl too) he wanted to bring his mother up to the ranch which he had been managing since, I don’t know. I think 1923 he’d been the manager. And it says now, of course – yeah, 1923; and so this must be ’27, ’28.
[08:02]
RW: So how did your dad get ranch skills? How did he rise up in the ranks? How did this happen?
WW: I’ll go back to that. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 5
RW: Okay.
WW: Because it’s quite a story for sure; I love it.
So Ma – he knew her, and he felt very sorry for her; so he invited her to come with his mother, as a chaperone (and I’ve got pictures of them). And he took them up in this time of year when he could do it; he took them up to what they call Hidden Lakes, where he used to love to go fishing. And he took his mother, and Ma, etc., etc.
But back where he came from, where she – where did Granny Wright come from? Her name was – her last name was Wilson or Holmes – Holmes Wilson; that’s something we’ve got to get straight: Jessica Holmes Wilson; Jessica Wilson Holmes [laughs]. And she didn’t tell anything to anybody until she was really getting old. And then she told my mother a little bit about her.
She told my mother how she hated to have to read to her dad when he got old, and she would have to read to him. And he was the head Episcopalian minister of the New York area.
RW: Wow.
WW: Then – we don’t know that, we’re working on it. And then she went out west and she married Jack Wright (that would be John Wright).
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: Don’t know what the old name is, I’ve got a picture of him. And he was a freelance journalist from the New Jersey area, and he came west. And of course, everybody could ride horseback, and he joined one of those trail herds (he knew nothing about that), but he joined one of those trail herds from Texas to Montana.
[10:40]
And I don’t think it went very far, but he cowboyed, helped herd the cattle (anybody could do that then), and ended up in southern California. The other, let’s see – the other grandfather Schwartz was a big family (an ancient, ancient family) in the Philadelphia area (Pennsylvania). And in fact, some of their names are on the original street in Philadelphia that you can go to in the historic district. And I have a black and white picture somewhere (at the ranch, I guess) of a graveyard, and I think it’s in Conway (or North Conway), New Hampshire, which is one of us.
RW: Whoa.
WW: And this is why this is critical, these things – because already I’m forgetting some of these details.
RW: Um-hmm. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 6
WW: Which was grandma Schwartz, and my mother said that we were related to four (meaning my kin), four people that signed the Declaration of Independence; one of them was William Penn, who apparently became the first governor of Pennsylvania. And then one was the Penn of the Revolution, which was Hamilton (I mean, I use to know those names).
RW: Uh-huh. So long-standing families?
WW: Yeah.
RW: In the United States.
WW: Yeah.
RW: So those families, then made their way west, to California?
[12:39]
WW: And that’s what’s interesting: how and why. The Mormon bunch (don’t get offended, I’ve got too many good Mormon friends – LDS).
RW: [Laughs]
WW: And one of our grandkids joined the Latter-day Saints. Anyway, and they’ve taken care of me super, and my mother admired them tremendously, for many reasons: they take care of each other, their independence; she loves their rules (even though you may be a Jack Mormon). Or what do you call it? The black sheep, etc. Anyway, so grandpa Schwartz – big family: four boys in Philadelphia (Germantown).
RW: Okay.
WW: Germantown today would scare you. But Germantown Academy; and I think they’re a wealthy family. And there were four boys, and they were extraordinary guys. And grandpa Schwartz (Preston Schwartz) was such a good fighter, that he trained in the gym with John L. Sullivan – the first heavyweight champion (and he was a middle weight). And he was so good, but they wouldn’t let him make money because he came from the upper crust.
RW: Hmm.
WW: But he could beat anybody. And the other one, Walter Schwartz, who later was president of – what’s that huge company now, that makes everything in the world? Anyway, real good looking guys. And I don’t know what the others looked like, but they were classy people, but boy were they tough.
[14:58] Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 7
And I always loved this story – I’ve loved to tell this story, because I’ve heard it from different sources, including my grandmother herself (he called her Katie).
RW: And this would have been her father?
WW: Katherine Schwartz.
RW: Um-hmm?
WW: I mean, that’s not Holmes, that’s right; Katherine Schwartz – I’ll have to look up her old name. Anyway, these four boys – a famous story about them that is just absolutely true: in those days they had the circuses, and they had a lot of wild things. And they had the guy that if you could last in the ring with him for one minute, you got paid some extraordinary, like $4 and something. And then if a wrestler could last, same thing. Well they kept digging grandpa.
RW: To get out there, and get in the ring!
WW: Get in the ring, and the kid was only 16, or something you know – really young. And okay, so Grandpa Schwartz got in the ring, and in the first round he knocked the guy completely cold. Well, huh – then maybe it was vice versa, the order, of whether it was grandpa, or Uncle Walter (as they called him), but then Walter was a wrestler; the wrestler guy in there (and he was a champion wrestler in what we call high school type thing). He got in the ring and pinned the guy immediately. So okay, “We owe you guys the money, we’ll meet you after the circus at a certain place.” And of course, there was the beef gang – remember what the beef gang was?
[17:08]
RW: No!
WW: The beef gang – if you’re a sailor they were hired guys that would come up and knock you in the head, and drag you down, and stick you on the ship that was headed for sea.
RW: Oh, no!
WW: Yeah, I mean they were that type.
RW: They weren’t really interested in paying your grandfather and uncle?
WW: Of course they weren’t!
RW: [Laughs]
WW: They weren’t going to pay – those guys were a disgrace! So but the four brothers went down there [laughs].
RW: [Laughs] They brought their own beef gang! Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 8
WW: Well, they beat up the guys that tried to get them, so bad, that they took the money (just the money they were owed), threw the rest on top of those guys and left. Then he now is – how old is he? Preston Schwartz, I don’t know; but his wife (to be) Katherine was 16. And he was down on the river there, in Philadelphia, and they had been to church and they was dressed to the nines – remember those straw hats? And just a beautiful, beautiful guy – he stood like this, you know, just a beautiful guy.
And they walked by those bars where all those sailors were, and (this is a true story, for sure), and the sailors made rude remarks (in those days they’d be a little different than today), but they made rude remarks about this girl. And he didn’t say anything, they just kept going. And they went to the corner, and he stopped, and he said, “Katherine, take my hat.” [Laughs] And Uncle Walter himself told me about it also; but Katherine (Grandma Schwartz) told me about it too.
[19:12]
But he just went back in there [laughs], and there were four of those guys in there, and he just destroyed them – just a savage animal. And I asked grandma, I said, “What did he do when he came back?” And she said, “He didn’t do anything, he just straightened his suit, and didn’t say a word.”
That’s this thing; I knocked it off of my hand. [Talking about something knocked off in the room.]
RW: I see it.
WW: Oh, there it is, I see it. Get her?
RW: Yep. Maybe you just lost a pin.
WW: Yeah, we’ll take it when we go. So it’s easier for me to talk if I’m animated.
RW: I’m that way too. I’ve got to use my hands.
WW: I know. But anyway, he was very successful. Some of these kids, including my mother (she might have been the last one that was born in Philadelphia), and the others were born in California. And uncle Charlie – there was an uncle Charlie, uncle Bill, uncle Tom – no, Tom is younger than-I’d have to think that through, I will in a few minutes. But he got typhoid fever really bad; Preston did (meaning grandpa).
RW: Um-hmm?
WW: Really bad. And I think he came with one son – the older son, probably Charlie, is at southern California for himself.
RW: I see. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 9
WW: And totally recovered, and loved southern California. And he went home and sold everything, and loaded this whole tribe on the train, and went to southern California. And once again, he did very well – he ended up, well he used to love to ride in his big, like a Cadillac, they call it. And a street car came right, dead-ended – he owned a whole block there, in those days – dead-ended right there. He’d get on the streetcar and go to Pasadena, or Los Angeles where he worked.
[21:47]
Pa, if it’s okay to skip back with him now –
RW: Okay.
WW: Incidentally, the old home is still – oh, they apparently (my mother showed me), apparently when they first came to southern California, they lived in a big, old house somewhere else, but then they came to the house that I knew so well.
RW: Right.
WW: And is still there.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: But anyway, Pa – they had no money, and Pa did so well as a paperboy in Los Angeles (I think there were 400,000 people there then), selling papers, that he bought a little pony with his own money, and a little cart, and delivered papers with it. And he made it so good – listen, this kid was a high achiever – he did so good (young Bill Wright), that when they went to Sierra Madre, he was nine years old and he made enough money to buy a full-size horse!
RW: Wow.
WW: [Laughing] Okay. So I’ve been told that he went on to be – I’ve seen the yearbooks, he became the student body president of Pasadena High School. And I’ve seen the yearbooks, even in those yearbooks he wrote western songs, and stuff; he just wanted to be a cowboy; and of course, he was a horseman.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: And he went to work in various places as a young cowboy: Arizona – no, New Mexico, probably Arizona also, and Mexico, Wyoming, Montana, California again. Anyway, he came home at a break (Christmas or something) to see his mother, and she had a friend who was a Yale alumnus, and they went to either Los Angeles or Pasadena – Los Angeles.
They rode that train, you know – they went over there to this big alumni reunion of Ivy League. And the Yale guys were sitting here, but right over there was a round table from Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 10
Dartmouth. And the Dartmouth guys were just – they were like some of the places you and I may have seen around here last night: raucous, fun –
[24:55]
RW: [Laughs]
WW: And Pa said to this one individual, he said, “Gee, I bet it would be fun to go to a place like that.” And this guy said, “Are you serious?”
And he said, “Yeah.” And on that conversation – he was a friend of my grandmother’s, see, but he loaned Pa $500, and bought him a one-way ticket to Boston; and he went to Dartmouth.
RW: Wow.
WW: And he had to carry bags in the summer at north station and stuff. And if you know Boston – do you?
RW: I don’t.
WW: Oh, well north station is – north station north station.
[Laughter]
So he went to Dartmouth, where he played football, and he boxed (of course), and you never saw such a – and he started the Dartmouth Camera Club, and he ski jumped. And he wandered off into the north on the Dartmouth Outing Club – which would go to Canada.
RW: Oh, wow.
WW: On breaks and stuff. And then – he’d have never had made it – he was biology, or something, and he had to go to Tufts –
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: To summer school once.
RW: Um-hmm?
WW: Because he was just, he was so dumb.
RW: [Laughs]
WW: And then (pardon me for not looking at you when I’m talking, because I’m just trying to pull it out). And he was saved by World War I, because the instant the war was declared (which would be 1917 America got involved, correct?) It started in 1914, he was class of Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 11
1918, so his class graduated early so they could go to war, and they all poured out and enlisted.
[27:13]
And when he was at Dartmouth, he was a Zeta [fraternity]; they were crazier than coyotes, wild. He used to say there were 54 of them, and he’d have to put 53 of them to bed on the weekend –
RW: [Laughs]
WW: Because he didn’t drink, zero. And anyway, he went to war, and he was totally qualified, just what they’re looking for, but the line was huge. The government doesn’t always tell things straight, and this officer came back and said, “Hey,” to him, he said, “Hey, you want to go to war?” Pa said, “Yes.” And he said, “You can go to war faster if you get in this line.” He said, “You’ll learn to fly the airplane, but you get to go to war a lot faster.” Which, as an observer –
RW: Observer?
WW: Yeah, in the air. Pa – I’ve got pictures of him – instead of having the full wings, it’s cut in half. So you know sitting in front of those damn things and being killed, he was one of two survivors of his unit.
RW: Oh!
WW: But! [Laughs] But like me, lucky baby, he developed . . . . Do you know who Patricia is? Our daughter-in-law?
RW: I don’t.
WW: She’s an orthopedic surgeon here.
RW: Okay.
WW: We had to marry her to [??]
RW: [Laughs]
WW: But anyway, she’s a wonderful girl (and a beauty), half Puerto Rican, half German. Her mother, who I really liked, was a Hitler’s youth. She told me, “Because I don’t point fingers.”
[29:29]
RW: Sure.
WW: She told me things nobody else knows. She took care of me once when I was – my first, I think my first hip operation at Reno. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 12
But anyway, back to Pa. He got tonsillitis so bad, that it was killing him. He didn’t go with the unit overseas, so he lived. And my grandmother told me this, but what happened was, he had real bad tonsillitis, and he was in the military, and the doctor said, “Here, kid; stand there, open your mouth.” And the doctor reached in and cut them off.
RW: Oh.
WW: And that led to such infection –
RW: Sure.
WW: That he almost died. Patricia says she can’t believe that. Patricia is a surgeon, I’m not.
RW: Right.
WW: So you figure it out. Anyway, he lived. So when the war was over, they turned them all loose. His classmates [asked] “Where are you going?”
“I’m going back to cowboying for $30 a month.”
Russell Thorpe was a big-time rancher in Wyoming; big time. One of those that save the – interest in museum, save the carriages, and everything. And he told me to my face about the first time this kid showed up.
RW: Your father showed up?
[31:29]
WW: Yeah. And he said, “This kid came to me,” and he said – oh, the Dartmouth guy, he said, “You’re crazy, with your college education?”
RW: Right; because he had graduated, right?
WW: Yeah; he graduated [laughing]! I don’t know if he could’ve made it otherwise, but the war did it.
RW: Before the war?
WW: Oh, yeah – no, he graduated from Dartmouth.
RW: Okay. And so they’re all saying, “Crazy!”
WW: Just think, “I graduated from Dartmouth.”
RW: Right.
WW: So anyway, as a kid he said, “We were loading cattle on a train.” And he said, “This kid came up to me,” and he said (of course, actually a veteran of the war). Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 13
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: I mean, age-wise.
RW: Right.
WW: And he said, “He wanted a job, did I have a job for him. I said, ‘No, we’re totally full, we’ve got a complete crew. We’ve got a real good crew, we don’t need anybody.’” And he said that the kid just was so insistent, suddenly, Russell Thorpe told me, he said, “Listen.” He said, “Okay, just jump on that train, and go with them cattle to Montana.”
And he later wrote things about Pa; he said that this kid turned out to be one of most exceptional – he never ever had a person like that before. He fed 400 steers in a terrible, bad winter; froze his hands so the rest of his life they were like this. In those days they packed them in snow, and he went to the doctor, and they had to amputate, they said. Pa said, “Screw that deal, I’m out of here.” They didn’t amputate; he took care of those cattle. Mr. Thorpe told me himself, he said, “I never saw a cowboy, I never saw a human that could take care of that many cattle in those conditions.”
[33:37]
RW: Hmm.
WW: And then Pa told me about how he learned to do things, and I’ve got great pictures for you of him up there. How he learned to do things – the cow boss for Mr. Thorpe was one of the old trail herd bosses. From down south, clear to Montana, he knew how to handle cattle. And Pa told me how they went to the river up there – what would it be? the whatever it is up there – went to the river, and how he would just take these cattle on a crew, and just go like this and go out on a sandbar like this.
RW: Hmm.
WW: The next thing the cattle were swimming across the river with no problem.
RW: Wow.
WW: I mean all those things.
RW: Right.
WW: And then granny Wright, who lived with us a lot of years, off and on later, insisted that I learn that poem “The Zebra Dun.”
RW: I love that.
WW: And it was obvious why, because she told me the true story. Here’s Pa, the young cowboy, and they had over 2,000 head of cows – calves were gone – 2,000 head of cows. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 14
And a boss – they took them to the train, and boss, and this guy jumped off the train wearing a hat like that.
RW: Like your hat?
WW: Yeah, a bowler.
RW: A bowler.
[35:39]
WW: And dressed to the nines: just in a black suit, little chain, and in those days, those tight pants, and spats –
RW: Spats?
WW: Yeah.
RW: Uh-huh.
WW: Just a beautiful guy; a lean, just a nice guy. He jumped off the train, and he was representing the buyer.
RW: Okay.
WW: And the boss said, “Mr. So and So,” and Pa is standing there, and the other cowboy. “And Mr. So and So,” he said, “I’d just like to borrow a horse and ride through them for a few minutes.”
The boss said, “Here’s all your cattle.”
He said, “That’s fine, but I just like to borrow a horse.”
So he gave him a horse, and he disappeared in the herd, and he came back [snaps his fingers] so quick, that the cowboys just went, “[Gasps],” they couldn’t believe it. To the boss he said, “Mr. So and So, I’ll take all of them except,” I think it was 13 head – it was 12 or 13 head. “There is a bad jaw, there’s a certain eye, there’s this, there’s that, there’s this. I’ll take the rest.”
And so you can understand, you know, I came up to my – well, I mean, I copied the cowboys I grew up with. I walked crooked and bull-legged, and I couldn’t stand it because I couldn’t ride my horse up to the house on the hill to go to school.
But anyway, “The Zebra Dun” tells the story.
RW: Yeah.
WW: I didn’t want to ever do anything I wasn’t doing; I was just going to cowboy all my life, and I thought I could ride anything you could saddle up, of course. And a kid, you know Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 15
he kind of looks down on the educated fellars [laughs]; well that kind of took care of that problem.
RW: Right.
WW: You know, so she would mainly just sit; and she and Pa would yell at me – everybody would yell back. You’ve always got to sit like a soldier on a horse: you never slump, and you always have to sit like this, or you make your horses uncomfortable – I mean you make a mark on their withers.
[38:27]
RW: Oh!
WW: The saddle does.
RW: Okay.
WW: And anyway, those type of things. And let’s see, what was another thing like that? I told you this morning, I guess, that one about Billy the Kid?
RW: Right.
WW: Yeah. T.E. Mitchell?
RW: Uh-huh – that your dad wrote out to him and asked him?
WW: Yeah; T.E. Mitchell, and Albert K. Mitchell – each one of them, later (many, many, many years later) Pa became president of the American National Cattlemen. And Albert J. Mitchell (wait; Albert C.T.E. Mitchell, yeah) became president right after Pa.
RW: Well I’m curious about your Pa. How did he get from Montana down to –?
WW: Yeah, and I’ll try and get in there.
Ask Mr. Russell again, and so he did all these things. Well, Mr. Russell was very, very impressed with him. He told stories to me about how he put him on a train to Chicago with the cattle. And he said he’d never had anybody like that, that would guard those cattle and be so responsible.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: That they got all the way. He got robbed: had all his clothes taken off in a dark spot, by the beef gang at a sighting – not in Chicago – a sighting somewhere. And Pa managed to get hold of some friend, somehow, and got re-dressed, re-clothes, re-everything (took all his money).
[40:33] Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 16
Mr. Russell Thorpe took him because he was like he was, took him to the Wyoming Stock Growers Convention (the state convention). And there was Mr. Bixby; Mr. Bixby was from California. Mr. Bixby owned the ranch that included – do you know what Signal Hill looks like?
RW: Yes.
WW: With the oil wells –
RW: Uh-huh.
WW: How it’s a hump like this?
RW: Yes.
WW: Well he owned half –
RW: Wow.
WW: That hill, to the – let’s see, that hill runs – if you’re north and look at it, he owned the half that goes to the east (or southeast), and there’s a great big ranch there. And these two guys are old friends.
RW: Mr. Thorpe and Mr. Bixby?
WW: Yeah. And Russell Thorpe: “Hey, how you doing?”
“Well, I’m doing really well. But the only thing I need and I don’t have doesn’t exist! I need an educated cowboy.” [Laughs]
And Mr. Thorpe said, “I got one.” And introduced them [Pa and Mr. Bixby.] And Pa went to work for Mr. Bixby as a foreman. And then, I don’t know how it worked, he met John E. Marble.
RW: Okay?
WW: Not Marvell, now – like the marble quarry.
RW: Uh-huh.
WW: He met John E. Marble, and he worked for Bixby: he did this, he did that, he did good there, and Bixby treated him real good. And then he went to the Tulasitas Ranch at Carmel valley.
[42:41]
RW: Oh.
WW: Above Salinas. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 17
RW: Uh-huh.
WW: And on the ocean – it goes down the ocean.
RW: Wow.
WW: By – not Santa Cruz – Santa Cruz? Yeah, whatever. And he became the foreman; and not only that, but he was being allowed by Mr. Marble to start accumulating cattle.
RW: Oh, okay.
WW: And made money.
And they went to – Pa came to Battle Mountain to buy cattle. And they had a wild time; loading his cattle by a full moon night in the dark (you know how the days get long loading cattle). And one critter got out, exploded out, and broke out someplace, and took off. And the cowboys had to get him, and so Pa was delayed; hung around Battle Mountain, and he heard about the old (Union Land and Livestock as one of the names – that’s probably the name it was) going broke on the speculating on the Boston wool market – and that’s this ranch.
RW: Now is that – I might be getting things confused here – is that anything to do with the Utah Construction Ranch – the UC?
WW: No.
RW: It’s a totally –
WW: The Utah Construction was an adjacent neighbor –
RW: Okay, okay.
WW: For many years. So the Union Land and Livestock; okay so the truth of the matter was – you and I will talk about this – but the truth of the matter was it was being stolen blind by the employees also.
RW: Oh.
[44:55]
WW: And the iron – the iron that they used was? What was it? Oh, the old 71, or something.
RW: Okay. What do they call –?
WW: No – what was that iron? Anyway, it can be changed tremendously.
RW: Right. So they’re branding up their own?
WW: They’re branding their own, and everybody’s got variations of that iron. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 18
RW: Okay.
WW: And I’ll tell you, the people that ran that outfit were the Russells, and they were cowboys in a big way. I mean they knew the ball game. Well anyway, so –
RW: And your dad hears about this?
WW: Huh?
RW: Your dad’s hearing about all this? I mean, he’s coming in, he’s –
WW: I don’t think he – I don’t know how much he knows yet.
RW: Okay.
WW: But anyway, the auction was in Carson City: I don’t think it was Reno. And the person was just – first of all, Mr. Marble was a friend, as I already told you, of people like Bixby.
RW: Uh-huh.
WW: I would think he would have even been a friend of people like Leland Stanford.
RW: Okay.
WW: See what I mean?
RW: Sure.
WW: They were the heavy hitters.
RW: Right.
WW: He was a friend, probably (I know the Bixby’s were) of the Rogers who built the bay at Newport, Balboa.
RW: Oh, big money.
WW: Huge money. Later it got mixed in with me.
RW: [Laughs]
WW: But anyway, and I must tell you why, because that’s critical in my life, why the Roger’s got mixed in with me.
But anyway, at the auction only two people big heavy: boom, boom, boom, boom, boom – and it was Mr. Marble, Pa standing beside him (his foreman), and Mr. Moffit – Bill Moffit. I bet you’ve heard of him! Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 19
[47:10]
RW: Uh-huh.
WW: In a big way.
RW: Yeah.
WW: They knew who each other were, but they didn’t know each other. And anyway, I suppose you didn’t have cameras in those days, sort of. Anyway, Bill Moffit just suddenly said, “I’m through.” And Mr. Marble had it. And Mr. Marble wrote out a check, and gave it to the auctioneer. The auctioneer said, “We don’t take checks; we have to have a cashier’s check.” And Mr. Moffit was standing there, and he said, “Okay,” he said, “Just wait a minute.” He said, “If Mr. Marble will come across the street, I’ll take his check and give him the money, and he can pay you.”
So then they went back, and pretty quick Mr. Marble said – I must say, too, this is very important: I had to live my – I thought I wouldn’t have to live it after Pa died, but I did – had to live with if I didn’t do things squared up: Mr. Marble was the example how you’re supposed to do things. There’s no gray.
RW: And that stayed with you long after your dad’s gone?
WW: [Laughing] Yeah.
RW: [Laughs]
WW: Well because I once told a Poulsen family in Squaw Valley (for example), the truth. I wrote to them; I just said, “I thought after my mother died I would no longer have to live up to certain things that they had expected of me.” I said, “It doesn’t work; you can’t.”
RW: Right.
WW: Your conscience really gets you. And I’m not an angel.
But anyway: so back to Mr. Marble, “You found us a ranch, Bill; now you’ve got to find somebody to run it. I don’t want to run it.”
“I want to run it.”
[49:39]
RW: Your dad says this?
WW: Yeah. (And I’m betting Mr. Marble didn’t use my words.) “You’re crazy!”
RW: [Laughs] Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 20
WW: “I won’t allow you to have any cattle up there; you can’t take anything with you up there.” And Pa said, “Nope, that’s what I want because I grew up in that world.”
Now just to jump aside to an extreme case – the reason Pa can speak Spanish fluently, because he was forced to live for one whole year in a remote camp, in I guess New Mexico or Arizona with a Mexican who wouldn’t speak a word of English.
RW: This is before the war, when he was –
WW: Part of growing up being a cowboy.
RW: Cowboy.
WW: And in one other extreme case, he was in Montana, and he was in a tent, near a certain town somewhere (probably somewhere around Cut Bank; yeah, because it was cattle on the Indian Reservation). But anyway it was up there with another older guy, a rough guy that later died from syphilis. But anyway, they were in the tent, and there were two killers on one of those. And anyway, they were in this tent, and suddenly this older cowboy said, “We’re out of here.” And they both rolled sideways underneath the back of their tent. And the killers came in the front. So he’d been around people.
[51:41]
Well anyway, Pa – he demonstrated this seriously in later years, I mean. So he came up here, and he went to the – I’d love to show you this place – they went to Deeth on January 1st to take over the company, and it was below zero. The railroad just roars right through that ranch. Right by the old office building is a great, big house – ancient, historic house (I love it!), and the old bunkhouse – and it’s hateful the way they aren’t taking care of it.
RW: Hmm.
WW: And the office building had dark columns on it, and everything. And my wife, TJ yesterday said, “Oh,” she said, “If I could just get that building; if we could move and take it.” But anyway, Pa told me this face-to-face, he told me this: he took one cowboy –
[Phone ringing]
RW: We’re good. Let’s see, I’m going to get you back on –
WW: Pa had – ready?
RW: Okay, got you.
WW: Okay, it’s recording.
Pa had just one cowboy with him he brought from the Tulasetas.
RW: Uh-huh? Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 21
WW: Who was Hilary Barnes – Hilary Barnes is Charlie, is Harvey Barnes’ father.
RW: Okay; I was like, “I’ve got this name.” You were mentioning him before today, that’s what I’m talking about.
WW: Yeah, and the Barnes are married in with the Marvels.
RW: Yes.
WW: The Marvels rodeo the horse –
RW: Uh-huh, yeah.
WW: See.
RW: Tom and Rosita Marvel?
WW: Yeah, Tom and Rosita.
RW: Yeah.
WW: Tom and Rosita are kids of – yeah.
RW: Got you.
[53:46]
WW: So Hillary – it was below zero, and those trains rumble by, and Hilary suddenly just sat straight up from the waist and said, “I’m out of here at daylight in the morning, on the first train.” And Pa said, “I used to always tell the story that they talked to four in the morning; for some reason has made me change it to two in the morning.” I don’t know what’s true. And finally Hilary lay back in bed and said, “Okay,” he said, “I’ll stay til spring.”
RW: [Laughing]
WW: Whew! [Laughs]
RW: That would have been a lonely winter for your dad.
WW: You know what he was like, Hilary? Did I say that this morning?
RW: Hmm-umm.
WW: I spoke at his memorial service. He was 135 pounds of – let’s see, he was 135, and 110% cowboy, and he had 30 seconds of tolerance.
RW: [Laughs] He didn’t suffer fools? Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 22
WW: [Laughing] And a young guy with a young horse, you know; and my pa was just the same way. And of course, you’ve got to be saddled and ready. And here’s these two guys: they were very, very good friends. And here’s these two guys sitting on their horse, and your horse is young; and of course, you’re scared, and of course, the more scared you are, the more the horse [laughs] gets – and they’re just sitting here, like this. Oh, boy.
RW: No wonder you sat up straight in your saddle.
WW: Oh yeah, they’d yell at you, you know, “Sit straight!”
RW: Yeah.
[56:01]
WW: Anyway, so I can finish with the Pa stuff – he was a human, and he was plenty driven, and he knew how to handle people; he knew how to handle men. He knew how to handle people in a big way. And you could be anything you wanted, but you were shaped up. And he wasn’t built like me – my mother was just like me: her whole family were built like this; and grandpa Schwartz, the fighter, was just like this (I used to be built good when I was young).
Well anyway, he was built like – he was short: five feet-eight and probably weighed 165. And his shoulders were very sloped, his waist was very wide, his hips were wide, his legs were very short. And he had tremendously powerful muscles.
RW: Big arms?
WW: Yeah; and the legs – these great big thighs – he couldn’t wear Levis, he had to wear, you know, he wore a loose pants sort of a thing.
RW: Because you’re very slender, but you’re saying –
WW: Oh, I’m skinnier than –
RW: [Laughs]
WW: But anyway, mom was, and my uncles were.
RW: Okay; that Schwartz.
WW: Yeah, especially the great athletes.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: Is anybody listening? Shut that off? No, I’m going to tell you, you’ll take it out later.
They always used to call me “nigger legs” when I was a sprinter. I was very fast because my leg (especially when I was doing a lot of stuff), my legs are good here – Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 23
RW: Uh-huh?
WW: But down from the calf – the calf ends here.
RW: Oh.
WW: It’s just this big around!
RW: [Laughs]
WW: I went through a line at an alumni game at Stanford one day, and a friend of mine (now a great friend, who was a three-time All American guard), he just – I had the ball and it went [makes sound and claps]. He just reached up and caught this, like with one hand – just held me up like this, and put me back!
RW: [Laughs]
WW: You see those rough guys in this game tomorrow (or Sunday) don’t tell me I don’t know what that all feels like.
RW: Yeah.
[59:00]
WW: Well anyway, Pa and Hilary – and Pa, he would take me to the wagon with him (they had to, I was a baby); you know, as a baby I was stuck on a horse. I mean, I was just a baby, sat up there, with my legs sticking out like that.
RW: Sure.
WW: But anyway, always had to go up there, on and on, and on. But a good example of Pa: he loved surveying, of all things. And he discovered on the flats out there (close to where we live today), he found – they made them with a willow – big, old survey markers.
RW: Okay.
WW: With a willow stick, or a rock [makes knocking sound], that’s marked –
RW: Uh-huh.
WW: Corner, corner, section, corner, corner.
And they had a guy that used to scare me when I was little, who lived at the Carlson Place – a small, little ranch, tucked up there on the rim rocks above us, hidden up in there. And he was stealing cattle, and he would shoot at the cowboys all the time [ping sound]. “Don’t you come near, remember the old rule” (just like the Turks are today, incidentally, and I know them good). This means “Stop.” This means “Stop now.” The third one, “Shoot to kill.” Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 24
RW: Where you bring your hand down quick?
[61:02]
WW: No, I mean, if a guy stops you in Turkey –
RW: Stops you? Uh-huh.
WW: When I’m driving into the bad part of Turkey, you know, this means, “Stop.”
RW: Stop? Okay.
WW: Stop now, [shooting sound].
RW: Hmm.
WW: Yeah, he just goes like this with his arm, and then –
RW: Uh-huh; he didn’t want anybody up there, because he was stealing.
WW: No, and what he would do – he would change the section corners –
RW: Ah!
WW: Because he homesteaded it.
RW: Okay.
WW: And they gave him a pile of rocks, nothing else! So he went two and a half miles (as I remember) – linear miles – changed the section corners.
RW: Your dad found him out?
WW: And Pa was suspicious, and he had already befriended the county surveyor, named Settlemeyer (another famous name in western Nevada), but Elko County surveyor Bill Settlemeyer. And so he got Settlemeyer out there, “Hey, let’s look at this.” Settlemeyer said, “Hmm.” (He checked it with his transit).
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: So Pa just went straight up there to this guy. And he went in there, and he said – he just went, period. And he said, “You’ve got two choices: you change the section corners – that’s a Federal offense. You’ve got the state penitentiary, or you quit stealing our cattle, and you quit shooting at our cowboys. A deal or not?” And Pa just walked away.
And he quit shooting at the cowboys – he just shot at new ones!
RW: [Laughs] Oh, no! Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 25
[63:05]
WW: And he quit stealing the cattle except the ones he ate himself – which that was perfectly acceptable to Pa. But Hilary would complain, you know, the wagon would be out there and they’re trying to pass by, and thunk! You know, and I remember with Ma, and she’d say, “Billy, I don’t like that,” and you’d hear this crack as we rode up to his gate, his little gate below the hill: crack! bang!
And Pa would laugh, and he’d tell me, “Get down, and open that gate!” And I would. And then he’d say to Ma, he’d say, “Lenny, you and Bill will wait here.” And he’d ride up, over the hill, and we’d hear one more shot right away, zingo, and silence; and he’d come back, happy as a thing. He had two people that he dealt with like that – one was over here in the Rubies. And then we were driving there, “Bill, get up and open that gate.” Bang! Same story.
But another, critical story: we were losing lots of cattle from a family – we’re going to be careful of this; we were losing lots of cattle: stealing cattle. So Pa went to –
RW: So when they’re stealing these cattle, they’re taking the calves before they’ve been branded? Or are they re-branding?
WW: No, I’m skipping a big chunk of time here.
RW: Okay, now you’re into your time?
WW: No, I don’t think I’m alive yet. “We’re losing cattle,” Hilary had come to tell him –
RW: Got you.
WW: “Bill, we’re losing cattle.” And Pa said, “Okay.” [Laughs] “Do this.” Pa was the big boss, remember.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: He said, “Do this: find a marker – “
RW: Got you.
WW: “And cattle rope it, and tattoo it inside the lips.”
RW: Okay.
[65:20]
WW: And then Hilary (with his then wife: not Mrs. Barnes, but his wife who died suddenly – one of the great tragedies we first had to deal with), he lived at Deeth, at that time of year, not at the cross ranch up above; he lived at Deeth. When you see cattle come in with this one particular family that we know is stealing (the Anderson’s is their names), he said, “You call me.” Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 26
And Pa (like my wife says) is just a regular – who is the famous inventor? Hamilton was it, that – who invented the electric light?
RW: Edison?
WW: Huh?
RW: Edison?
WW: Edison, yes. I know my wife has often said, “He was just a Thomas Edison.” He rigged a telephone line – single wire telephone line all the way from the 71 Ranch, and stuff. And Hilary called him, “Moonlit night,” said “The cattle are in the corral, and the calf is there.”
So Pa came straight to Deeth, they climbed the fence, called the calf. It had a mark: a little tiny, brown mark on it somewhere (I think it was on the face). And they roped it, threw it on the ground, looked inside –
RW: Sure enough.
WW: So, the Andersons were brothers, and they were tough: they beat up people, they fight, they do anything – they’d shoot you, they’d do any darn thing. And I always heard how Pa did it; it was just an amazing story. Right there in Deeth (and their house was – let’s see, that would be not more than 200 yards from the corral – probably, I don’t think a quarter of a mile), he just walked up there and beat on the door.
“What do you want?” One of the brothers came out. Pa said the same thing to him, “You got two choices: quit stealing the cattle, or the Federal penitentiary.” Turned his back, and walked away. And you know, he just did things like that, and it worked.
RW: People respected him.
[68:08]
WW: Well, I’ mean they weren’t going to screw with him, yeah.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: He was a short guy, when I wrote about him, he was a presence in every room he ever walked into; nice guy, real good looking guy.
RW: Well I have a question for you: it sounds like you’ve written a lot of this up?
WW: I’ve written some of it, and I’d like – you know, I’ve written a lot of it.
RW: I’d like to get a copy, to connect – if you?
WW: I think I should give you several copies of things before you leave town. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 27
RW: That would be great.
WW: And I think they’re in Elko, and they’re at the ranch.
RW: Okay – I’m going to check our time. We’ve got about – oh, 12 more minutes.
WW: Okay, good.
RW: So I’ve got – I do want two things I want to ask you, and I don’t want to interrupt your story, but you know, one of the things people are talking about – I want to know a little bit about your operation, but I want to know about the flying. That’s so – I’m so fascinated by that.
WW: Excuse me! I’m sorry, I was caught.
First, I have to interrupt it all – is it turned on?
RW: Yep, it’s going.
WW: Mr. Rogers [knocks] – I got hay fever about the fourth of July. So from the time I was dinky, they thought I would develop asthma, I couldn’t even talk (it’s like right now) [laughs], I couldn’t talk. So my mother would take the two kids – my brother was what, 18 months younger – back to her parents in Sierra Madre.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: And Balboa, which is on the Newport peninsular – old Balboa. And she’d keep us there for awhile; then we’d go home. Well, Grandpa Schwartz (I already told you about him), he owned those places. And a great friend of his was Mr. Rogers, who built that bay, and is a legend. And Mr. Rogers had his own yacht – a huge thing: it looked like a little steamer! And there was an island there, like this – little, bitty bay island – and a bridge that goes. And then Mr. Rogers had this big house on the corner of the bay there.
And Grandpa Schwartz fished on his pier, and grandpa Schwartz was just a nut for fishing: always fished. And he was fishing, and I was with him, and I hated fishing because you had to stand around, and mess around. But I was with him, had to be grandpa, and I was five years old.
[71:24]
And here came his yacht [making engine puffing sounds]. And on the prowl was standing Mr. Rogers, dressed in a complete captain’s suit, and everything: a captain’s hat and it was heading on further up. And beside him was this little, fat boy, dressed in a sailor suit. And you know what I said?
RW: [Laughing] Something embarrassing to your grandpa? Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 28
WW: Verbatim, I said, “Look at that little, fat, spoiled, rich boy.” And grandpa just exploded; he was as quick-tempered as I am. He turned around, boy, and he said, “Listen, you’re much more fortunate than that little boy. He’s an unhappy little boy; he has a much more difficult life than you do. Don’t you ever say anything like that again!”
Well the kid was six years old – he was my best man for my wedding.
[Phone ringing]
He was a founder of Squaw Valley was his dad, Mr. Rogers.
RW: So that little boy –
WW: The little, fat boy.
RW: Ended up being your best friend?
WW: Yeah, yeah; the little fat boy became my first best friend ever. Because you know, a remote kid, I wasn’t used to other kids, or anything. And then the little girl, GeorgeAnn, was the age of my brother, and they became best friends. And that family was class, class, class. And Mrs. Rogers a white-haired person, and Mr. Rogers – I mean, they were just something else.
I don’t remember Mr. Rogers, he must have died earlier; I vividly remember Mrs. Rogers, and Mr. Rogers was obviously alive. I started visiting their house immediately; yeah, Mr. Rogers obviously was still alive. I just can’t – I remember Benny, the son-in-law, married to Mrs. Benny, who became an absolute best friend of my mother’s (there’s paintings of them together there, and stuff). But anyway, that was awfully important.
[74:33]
And back to Pa – the captain of this huge ranch.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: We did all sorts of bad stuff, supposedly; we did a lot of stuff (kids do things). Huge ranch – they can’t keep you under control. But they built a new barn when the old one burned down, and it had a downstairs, an upstairs, and a huge place for the hay, and then a paddock. A paddock, and there were windows from the place upstairs where you could hang out and watch the guys training horses. And I leaned out that window, John and I were leaning out the window, watching something to do with horses, and the foreman (named Orson) said, “Hey you boys get out of there. You can’t watch that, your Pa said you couldn’t.”
Right up the hill to his office, marched in there, “Pa, did you tell Orson,” [whispers] (that lying son of a bitch – I can still say that about that guy, who later tried to kill me); but anyway: “Did you tell Orson that we couldn’t do that?” Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 29
Pa said, “No.” And then he said, “But listen, I’m the boss here, I’m the commander; and I can’t be taking stories about my foreman or any of my employees from two little kids.” He said, “If something really dangerous, and you’re coming for that reason – something dangerous to you two – you can come to your mother or me, but otherwise, no.”
[76:34]
Guess what that meant? Guess who couldn’t come to the big boss because the big, tough men couldn’t come to the big boss for what two little kids did. That was critical in my life too.
RW: Right. I think we should turn this off.
WW: We should.
RW: Because your wife’s expecting you.
WW: We should.
RW: But you know what we should do, I think –
[End part 1 of 2 – 77:02]
[Part 2 of 2 – 00:01]
RW: So here we are, Saturday morning, again at the Pioneer, at the Western Folklife Center, with Mr. Bill Wright. It is the fourth of February, 2012, and we’re continuing with our interview on ranch families.
And Bill, we were talking about you were a little boy, and you had you know, you spent some time in California, with your mom.
WW: [Laughing] Yeah.
RW: But then you’re back on the ranch, and you’re being employed – you’re starting to do some things for your dad.
WW: Now and then interrupt me –
RW: Okay.
WW: With questions, for sure.
RW: Okay. Well, I’m just going to let you go.
WW: Well, I’ll go [laughing], I’m sure – just don’t let me down the hall. I am going to go with this “beer.” [As noted from his prompt.]
RW: Okay. And Bill has written up a list of prompts of things in his life. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 30
WW: Just, yeah, a few.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: I’m working – at home, I’m working on Indians now.
RW: Okay.
WW: Indians in my life.
RW: Got you.
WW: Naming them.
RW: Okay, so – beer.
WW: Beer; I’ll stay with the beer and cigarettes for a minute, and we don’t have to come back. I think we even make little check marks.
RW: Okay.
WW: On the beer – I told you when Pa and Hilary ran the wagon, they were very good friends. When he had a chance, he’d take Ma – and we had a little tent, or something, and we’d head for the wagon, you know. And being a little, dinky kid, I remember my little, tiny, tiny, little tent was right out with the horses. And horses, as you know, chomping at night: chomp, chomp, chomp right there. And then I loved the fact the tinkle, tinkle little stream, right there beside me – just loved that stuff; [laughing] I’ve never quit it!
[02:03]
And while we’re talking, actually (we’ll get to the beer), while we’re talking about that occasion, while it’s in my mind – which was the Carlson. The Carlson ranch was the one where I mentioned that –
RW: They were shooting?
WW: Yeah.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: And I don’t think I finished telling that Pa went to him, and told him –
RW: Right.
WW: What he shouldn’t, shouldn’t do. And I finished that part; I didn’t finish the initial conversation with him (the bad guy – I guess his name was Carlson). He said, “If you quit doing those things,” [laughs] I told you, “We will not ask you to move. This is your home until you die. But when you die, then the lines will have to go back where they belong.” Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 31
RW: Right, because he is the one that had taken more of his claim – he changed the survey?
WW: They put him on the rock pile.
RW: Right.
WW: He only had to move off the rock pile about to here, a little dinky ways, and build his cabin – it’s got a beautiful spring, and a beautiful meadow, and the willows (they used to shoot over the top). And that rock pile – I saw it yesterday when I went home – is still there, and every day – you can’t see his cabin, it’s hidden up in there, in the willows.
And anyway, so that was the understanding, and that’s how a company ended up with the property that they were supposed to have.
RW: I see.
WW: I mean you take care of everything if – they treated him great, actually, and tried to find errors.
Okay, the beer. Pa would – oh, still at the Carlson, that spot. I was taught to never get in my bedroll or sleeping bag (in modern times) without checking it, period. Hilary Barnes came to – the Carlson is full of rattlesnakes, always has been, and I mean lots of them. And Hilary Barnes came to Elko (in those days that’s a long trip in the wagon), and camped at the Carlson. And the Carlson was the very first place the wagon pulled up to when the cowboys took off in the spring.
[05:16]
RW: Right.
WW: To brand.
RW: Tell us a little bit about what a wagon would consist of?
WW: [Laughs] It was just etched in my memory, and I’ve got a lot of good pictures of them. There was a chuckwagon, pulled by four to, usually six mules – [laughs] I told you about the mules!
RW: That’s right, breaking the mules.
WW: Well!
RW: And some you didn’t break! [Laughs]
WW: Cowboys use three – and Jack said cowboys were too scared to use any of the others [laughing]. But anyway, and then it’s got the cook, or a top hand drives the team – remember that’s a multi-team; not this way, this way. All six of them hooked with the connections of the harness right on the out. And of course the lead, you’ve got lines going, the whole bit; it’s a trick to do it. And in that wagon is the chuckwagon: it’s got Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 32
the stove, it’s got the tent, it’s got a big, high seat, and of course iron wheels, iron around all wood, and just wood brakes you know. Go to the museum and look at them.
RW: I’ve seen some. Do you know a gentleman by the name of – oh, shoot, it will come to me [Mearl Rowe]; he lives up in Idaho, and he’s got a lot of wagons up in his barn.
WW: Who is he?
RW: It will come to me, and I’ll tell you.
WW: Okay.
RW: If you know him, he worked down here – he was a hand, and he worked out San Jacinto up in that area. He worked forever – he’s like in his 90s now, but he’s got some of those old wagons.
WW: We have quite a bit at the ranch. And then behind it came the bed wagon – it also was hooked up with mules, often only four of them.
RW: Now would the bed wagon have tents, or would you just sleep out under the stars?
WW: The bed wagon just had our bedrolls.
RW: Right, okay.
WW: Heaped up in there.
RW: Okay.
[08:03]
WW: And whatever other things. And the tent, the cook tent, when we camped the cook tent actually enclosed, the thing came out over the chuckwagon, and then had a big, folded out, and it had pins, canvas. And in there was a bank of lighting, you set up a table –
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: And you could eat inside.
RW: Okay.
WW: Or, many times on the open range, as you’ll see Charlie Russell’s great pictures (probably right there), you would just ride up, and they would be camped for just a short period, and the tent wouldn’t be all set up (you’d just sit out there and get fed).
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: And hopefully have a slicker. And anyway, that’s how we traveled. And we went from – Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 33
RW: What kind of cavy was you with?
WW: I wish I knew the truth of that, because there never was a cowboy that didn’t have more horses than he needed; that’s part of it – you’ve got to (I mean, sort of). And we had, with a full crew there’s Hilary, and let me think about this – usually seven of them. And each one had six or seven horses.
RW: Right; so were you doing a rope corral, were you hobbling?
WW: Yeah, just – no, no – you just set up – that also is included in that wagon, just a big, long rope –
RW: Uh-huh?
WW: And little things to fasten; and you just get them in there in the morning, and rope the horses. And in our case, unlike a lot of times now days, Hilary roped the horses.
RW: I’ve heard that – that the foreman would rope the horses –
WW: He let them out, and gave you the horse you wanted.
RW: Right, uh-huh. Tell me about that, how does that all work? It’s the company’s horses, and so the foreman’s going to decide what horse is ready? What hasn’t been ridden? The terrain? How does that all work out?
WW: Well who is the rough string rider, who rides the tough ones –
RW: Uh-huh?
WW: The young guy, some young guy.
RW: Uh-huh.
WW: But they all, in those days were professional cowboys. And before the war (World War II), like my Pa’s horses would have to be in there (horses for my father and mother – that’s extras right away).
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: He wouldn’t have to have seven, but he’d have to have at least two for her, and at least two or three for him. And I have to think – we’re talking about the seven, seven, 49, 50 – I’ll tell you, we must have had a cavy of anywhere from 60-75 horses, all the time. And wait a minute, there’s those mules –
[11:40]
RW: Um-hmm. What kind of horses? Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 34
WW: Ah-hah! Now you’re talking about the 7S – nobody rode better horses, period (and that goes for today). We rode a unique combination – basically it came from the old Army remount service – you’ve heard of that?
RW: Um-hmm, yeah!
WW: But we were – we were basically a combination of American saddle horse, mixed with (as the years went by), mixed with – let’s see, it was American saddle, what were those other mothers? They always had these great studs; what were those things? Incidentally, our work horses were all Clydesdale, all of them giant mothers. But what were those? I’ll try and think.
RW: Sure.
WW: It’s a great question, because certainly in my time, and after we got the ranch on our own, we began to mix them with quarterhorse studs, and I knew exactly the kind of quarterhorse I wanted; I didn’t want the junked-up quarterhorse, with the big muscles, and the round thing that your saddle rolls around on. I wanted a smooth-riding, long-range, distance horse that you could ride all day. A lot of people don’t understand –
[13:33]
RW: Is that like a slow – my husband’s a runner, and he talks about fast twitch, and slow twitch muscles.
WW: Right.
RW: Slow twitch – you want one that can go, and go, and go; is that what they’re called, I think?
WW: Yeah, but even that is a fascinating subject for me, which I’m directly involved in right now, today, at ninety years – whatever I am. And I’m very much involved in that, and the thoughts we had about that are quite different.
RW: With breeding?
WW: No, the thoughts that we had about humans and horses are very similar.
But anyway, we mixed in thoroughbreds – thoroughbred is probably what we had mixed in there early.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: But then it became these quarterhorses. And I want a quarterhorse (they exist) that stand tall, have good withers, and you can ride comfortably. And the dynamite moves of a classic quarterhorse, even they vary tremendously. Tomcat (the horse I was riding on that hat story) was, he was magic with his feet, and he grew up in the country; but he was much closer to a class quarterhorse, but he had withers. And he was not big, but to ride Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 35
him all day – running horses, he was so fast – and running horses, yeah. But to ride him all day? Twenty-five miles in a straight line would just beat you to death.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: And the horses I usually would use, like Piute (a horse I had named Piute), you’d just ride that mother til time froze over, and he took care of you. Come to a gully as deep as this, you hadn’t seen – this great, big, tall horse – he was a giant cat. Ah! And oh! He’d jump all the way across it, and make it –
RW: Wow!
WW: Surprised him and me, too.
RW: Wow.
[16:07]
WW: Okay.
RW: Cigarettes and beer!
WW: Yeah. So back to the rattlesnakes.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: Hilary came home late to Carlson, and he was so tired, that he said, “I always check my bed with a flashlight; not going to do it tonight.” So he got his clothes set, and he started to crawl in, and he thought that would be bad luck. And it was at the Carlson, he lit his flashlight at the very bottom of his bag was a rattlesnake, quietly.
Ugh. The beer.
RW: Now, I have a question – so you check in there, there’s a rattlesnake: what do you do?
WW: Well, you get him out of there!
RW: Yeah, right; but I mean do you kill it, or do you just take it and flop it out, and let it go on it’s way? What’s the procedure?
WW: What do I do? I’ve never found one in my sleeping bag.
RW: Okay.
WW: But I’ve dealt with them lots of times.
RW: But I mean, like I know my dad, you know, if he saw one he’d chop it’s head off with a shovel or something. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 36
WW: Yeah, that’s normally what we do; but remember you’ve got to be careful of the skull, even.
RW: Right, but I’m just wondering at nighttime – it sounds like he’s undressed, what’s he going to do with this? I don’t know, I’m just curious.
WW: [Laughing] Well –
RW: Do you just like, you know, get something and bat it in his sleeping bag or bedroll? I don’t know, I’m getting you off track, sorry.
WW: Charlie McNabb was in his 80s; and he was just incorrigible, tough cowboy. And I wasn’t married then, and we were camped at Hank’s Creek (which is loaded with snakes and stuff). And I remember, “Hey Charlie, there’s a rattlesnake over there in that bush right over there.”
“Where is he? That bush right there?” He just – Mary was there – he just walked over there, and he was just wearing cowboy boots, and he just stepped on the bush, and tromped around, killed the snake.
RW: Yeah.
WW: That’s not what the book says.
RW: Exactly [laughs].
[18:29]
WW: And right across from him – Cliff Gardner I showed these places to – but right across from him there’s a little moundy hill, and two men and 13 mules were killed there by lightening.
RW: Hmm.
WW: One terrific shot. And I went there for years (archaeology-type thing), hoping for evidence of that. I found bones, and stuff – but that was always the story at that hill. And Mary and I almost got killed, right after we were married by doing something stupid right there with our tent – same place.
But back to the beer – I’m back at five years old. We’ve gone to Coyote Lakes (just let that be in there); we’ve gone to Coyote Lakes (wonderful place), and there was like a little shack (two rooms). And because it’s Pa and Ma – the cowboy and his wife who weren’t part of the seven (they were the outriders in a place of fences); they spent all summer in that part of the country. And when the wagon would get close enough, he’d come in and help us.
But he was something. But anyway, they let us use their cabin (one of the rooms), and I was hunting horned toads. And I was five years old, and I was running likely cut, it was Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 37
about the fourth of July, and I was tearing through the bushes, and catching horned toads. And I was soaked with sweat – a little kid, you know.
And I came running all the way back to the house, and came in. And Pa was standing in there, and he had a mug of beer (basically he never drank), but he had a mug of beer. I can only tell you what I saw. And my mother was there (she, of course, didn’t touch anything). And I saw that, I said, “Give me a drink!” And Ma said, “Don’t let him touch that, drink that.”
[21:00]
I thought, see, it was root beer – which was my favorite drink on earth. We couldn’t have root beer out there; I don’t know where they’d get it. But anyway, that’s root beer. And he said, “Yeah, go ahead and drink it.” That was the last drink I ever had until I was 50 or so (there-abouts). And even today, if I drink some – and I will with Mexican food – it’s one drink.
And it was such a terrible thing, it was such a shocker – and that isn’t the only reason that I didn’t drink, however. The reason that my folks didn’t – certainly I never saw them, I never saw Pa ever with a mug of beer again. Why? Maybe Ma wouldn’t let him do it in front of us.
But we lived at the 71, the big house, two-story, been an officer’s house for all our days. And the men’s – we’ll have to go there with you some day, we’ll make a point of it – but it’s a huge place. And the kitchen: a giant kitchen, with a giant stove in the house, and then the boss’ dining room is here, like this at this end of the kitchen, and the window faces the Ruby Mountains, beautiful secret pass – big window. And it’s in the bunkhouse and stuff. And the men come around, past the kitchen, and come in a side door. And their place to eat (it amounts to a cookhouse, it’s all in there), a big, big long table in there. And then at the end of that table is a closed door, and that’s where the cook lives.
[23:12]
Well anyway, okay – actually, as far as alcohol, that’s that first story.
RW: Okay.
WW: And the alcohol caused everything terrible that I saw in my early life, including the closest call (I’ve had some close calls). I told you about the reflexes, [laughing] I told you about God, but this is the exact story. And this was written so long ago, it will be even more accurate than today.
And I was so terrified, and it was so close, that post-traumatic-stress-syndrome, that I [makes shaking, shivering sound] just shook like this anytime I saw any evidence of drinking.
RW: From taking that beer that one time? Or from something else? Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 38
WW: From this guy trying to kill me.
RW: Well I don’t know the story, what is it?
WW: Well you better – I’ll read it; I’ll just read it easier than –
RW: Okay.
WW: [Reading]
“Roscoe Worley was his name, 71 Ranch: short, dark hair, 25 years old, plus or minus. The ranch chore boy: muscular, strange walk, bow-legged. Ma and granny upstairs in the big house, John nearby, all the men gone working: 1942. The real guys have gone to war.” (You know, the people that couldn’t go were for agriculture.)
“I heard an almost animal-like shout below the hill, a sort of a scream. One of the women told me to come to the front porch.” (Which is two stories, you could see down the hill. I was south of the house. Okay.)
“They called me to come,” (and then it doesn’t say anything.) “She said (my mother) took a look, and said) “Run down to the bunkhouse and see if any of the men are there.”
I went down to the bunkhouse, the hill is like this, see, like this – a big house here, sits back from the hill a little bit. Up on the top you can see the barn yard. And he was down there, walking toward the barn, and I glimpsed him.
RW: Roscoe?
[26:23]
WW: Yeah, Roscoe was walking toward the barn like this. And he always limped like that.
“And run down to get the men” (see if there’s a guy there). “I ran as fast I could.”
I went tearing down. You had – the house is sitting here, and had to tear out the big fence, big yard – had to tear out this little driveway, and here’s a gate (not closed) – driveway comes clear in, and a building, and a big, solid fence posts, and wire. And then like this, and the hill is here, the hill goes all along. The bunkhouse is perched down here on the edge of the hill. You go down this trail, to the bunkhouse – probably from here [Western Folklife Center] at least to Capriola’s [store across the street].
RW: Okay? So we’re talking a football field?
WW: Not quite, I’d say 50 yards.
RW: Fifty yards, okay. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 39
WW: And so – and that may be a big exaggeration – no, no; it can’t be too much. And so I started back – see, I’m south of the house – what I should say is I am southeast of it still, I’m on that trail.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: Because this whole ranch is set up like a military fort, my Pa insisted it staying that way – meaning it’s set on squares –
RW: Right.
WW: East, west –
RW: Right.
WW: Every building lined up perfect.
RW: Right.
WW: “So I was south of the house, and started toward it: Roscoe appeared on top of the hill” (outside the fence, of course. The same level as the house as me, on the east of me straight east of me, sort of lurching toward me at right angles), “And carrying a long, nearly straight butcher knife in front of him that he’d gotten out of the kitchen.” (chore boy). “Razor sharp, with a blade over a foot long.”
And this will be very accurate, this story.
[Reading]
“From the ranch kitchen.” Oh, it says that. “In the first floor of the big house he shouted at me, ‘Stop! Come here!’ Then, ‘Stop!’ And speeded up his approach. A hundred, plus or minus, feet north of me was the road width and an open gate I had to get to, and through, to get onto the house. A hundred (plus or minus) feet farther and Roscoe and a slight angle on me. Closer to the gate than me, I hesitated a second, looked at him, judged the angle, and broke for it. He charged too. I remember that angle so clearly, which he had.”–
And I still remember what I did. I went as hard as I could, he went full-length, and I just, “blah!” like that. He went full length on the blade and it didn’t touch me, brought my chest back.
RW: You just moved forward, you put your chest forward out, and he went behind you?
WW: Yeah, it wasn’t my chest, it was just – [grunts].
RW: Your whole body?
WW: And he was going for this. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 40
RW: Uh-huh? And it went behind – the knife went behind you?
WW: Yeah, I just [groans] leaned forward, and meanwhile he had dived. Let’s see, Price says:
[Reading]
“I remember that angle so clearly which he had. I beat the point of the knife by ten inches to two inches. It will be forever etched in my peripheral vision: both of us running full speed at the intersection, he lunged with a knife at the end, and he just slid out across the ground, the way you do when you miss when you’re trying to get a baseball.”
RW: Right, yeah.
WW: And that gave me a split second to get cracking. “Well, totally terrified in the house, I was” – I left these blank spots to:
[Reading]
“I was totally terrified in the house. We could hear him coming, slowly and loudly, up the outside steps.”
He went by the kitchen, then steps on the outside of the house that came to the porch, where my Pa’s office was, and a full-length window – was a “V” like this, and there’s always a porch.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: He came up the steps of the house, he got on the porch, and this full-length window in my Pa’s office was here, and it had a little window in the door. Let’s see:
“We could hear him coming, slowly, and loudly up the outside steps. Suddenly he peered with a knife on the porch, coming at the office door in the large glass window of the nursery.” As they called it, which is where our school room, and where we had a stove, and we used to do our schoolwork. And the windows almost full length. Let’s see:
“I huddled by granny, and probably with John. Ma was in the office, totally cool, issuing, crisp, clear orders to us: no sign of fear or waiver.” I mean, she was like an ice cube. But I now know in much later years (she’s never said this), but there’s all sorts of guns in that corner; she could have taken him out instantly, with no hesitation.
RW: Like I said before we went on tape, “Don’t get between a mother and her kids.”
[Laughter]
WW: Tiger and her kids.
RW: Exactly.
WW: [Reading] Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 41
“Roscoe distracted himself, and nearly fell over the porch railing, which he lay on momentarily (I prayed he’d fall). Then off toward the bunkhouse he went, back down the steps, off toward the bunkhouse, 75 yards. John Gordon and one or two other men returned. Ma somehow contacted them; they caught Roscoe. What seemed like hours (maybe was), sheriff came with one or two deputies: maybe one of those three people. (The sheriff, see. )
The sheriff came with one or two deputies, one of them.” I think; and then I thought a deputy may have been one of our men, it says maybe one was one of our men.
“The sheriff’s car was parked right outside that gate and I could see it all clearly. Three of them brought Roscoe to the car in handcuffs, he was totally quiet. Suddenly, he tore loose, and streaked like a flash in a straight line for 30 yards, southwest, through the brush. No one could come near catching him.” My heart just stopped, period.
“Finally, three or four of the men cornered him in the brush by a fence 50-plus yards away.” And what it doesn’t say, is I remember he slipped when he jumped across the ditch, but it slowed him down. But anyway, they caught him there; a total, wild, fighting bobcat. Of course the knife wasn’t there, he had dropped it, remember, on the porch.
“Suddenly, he stopped and came easily and quietly back to the car. They tied him up more.” They chained his feet together.
RW: Hobbled him?
WW: They hobbled him completely. Later we heard what happened next.
“Later we heard that on the way to Halleck and Elko, on that dirt road. He totally exploded again, though all chained up. The car was nearly wrecked and off the road, and three of them had all they could do with them. He had struck at the back of the driver, without warning, with both feet – bringing him clear up, and going [makes grinding sound].”
Whew! [Laughs] John Gordon wasn’t in the car, I don’t think. I think probably it really was another deputy. John Gordon said that Roscoe had drank a bottle of rubbing alcohol. Well, that was sort of an exaggeration, that he drank some rubbing alcohol. And why wasn’t he in the Army? Because he also was insane, so he was 4F.
“My result in uncontrollable teeth-rattling, body-shaking terror at any sign of alcohol or an insane person gradually matured.” And this is a strange thing in a kid, but boy did it work on me. We go to Elko to pick up a chore boy that had been drinking – he was walking by the Commercial. And he was named Roy Jenson, and he was a hand. And Pa drove up beside him, Ma opened the window, John and I in the back. And, “Roy, you ready to go home?”
“I ain’t going back to that G-d ranch.” And he tipped his hat, whistled down the street, “I ain’t going back to that G-D ranch an those cows.” [Laughs] To milk them, you know, and stuff. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 42
And I just [makes teeth-chattering sound] – and Ma said, “Stop that! Quit that baby stuff,” she just got furious.
[38:28]
RW: But you had been traumatized.
WW: Well, post-traumatic stress.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: Is the fancy word –
RW: Sure.
WW: That is hurting us today; that word, not the fact. I totally understand it because I’ve had it about three times in my life – evolved into intense hatred, yet total calm. This is me – see my eyes [laughs]:
[Reading]
“This evolved into intense hatred, yet total calm, total confidence of being able to handle any of them, in any situation later. I would instantly (it seemed) revert completely into a totally cornered animal. A cocked mother tiger, hatred flickering through me, total disdain, yet fully alert and ready to go to any extreme. This was always true, whether friends, fraternity brothers, or total strangers in any environment.”
Did you hear that?
“The first exception to the hatred, and some of the disdainful part was at the Preston Taber Wright/Patricia wedding reception in 19-something, in Lamoille. I initiated and volunteered to drive a looped Carmen Fimiani home.” First time ever.
And Carmen was a great friend of mine – he was a tremendous hero in the Marine Corps. He’s totally brilliant; he’s one of my closest friends. He is the reason that Newmont acquired the TS Ranch, period. Period!
[41:03]
You’ve heard of McNamara – Secretary of Defense.
RW: Oh, yeah.
WW: Of course!
RW: Yeah.
WW: Well, he had two whiz kids: Roy Ash, and Tex Thornton: brilliant. They were the two whiz kids that did the thinking under him at the Pentagon, and brilliant characters. And Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 43
anyway, there’s Carmen hot dog so-and-so. Oh, what else can I say? Oh, he was first introduced me to a guy that I taught how to fly, and who became a tremendous big shot himself.
RW: Well this makes me think about – you’re talking about some memories as a child that have stayed with you, and affected you.
WW: All the way to today.
RW: To today. Let’s talk about – so this is something traumatic, and I would categorize not a hero, not a mentor, but at the same time, this Roscoe ended up mentoring you in a different way.
WW: Right.
RW: Let’s talk about a mentor, some of these old cowboys that were mentors: that you loved.
WW: Okay.
RW: You’ve got a whole list of them down there.
WW: Yeah.
RW: Who are some of those guys?
WW: Carmen would be fun to talk about some time. He remains a person I go to when I need to sort through things. And he told the president of Consolidated Gold Fields South Africa, who owned all this, who came to a board meeting but Carmen was the chairman. And he said, “Mr. Fimiani, I don’t like your attitude.”
And Carmen said, “Are you trying to scare me?” He said, “You can’t; I’ve been there. Shut up and sit down.” (And I was told this by the board of Newmont.) So that’s a mentor.
RW: Sure.
[43:25]
WW: In later life.
RW: Yeah.
WW: Now, so back to the dang, dirty alcohol. One of our Indians – this is part of the alcohol still, it has a tremendous effect. One of our wild, wild, wild Indians that I just – well, they killed a bunch of people. But anyway, he had a beautiful Indian wife – super Indian wife; she was so pretty – and she wanted him to go dancing. And Pa was there, it was Saturday night; he said, “No.” (He always got in fights, and caused trouble drinking, or fight, or a warrior.) Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 44
And he said, “No, I’m not going to go tonight, I just don’t feel like it – I’ve been stacking hay all day.” She said, “Ray, you’re not going to take me?”
“No,” he said.
“Okay.” She hadn’t been drinking; she took strychnine for porcupines, in front of the men. And she just spun a circle on the lawn with her feet while she foamed at the mouth until she died; made a mark in the lawn. Nobody could do anything with that.
RW: Hmm.
WW: Doesn’t that make a mark on you?
Well anyway, then the other thing that kept me, of course, from the alcohol was athletics (and my folks didn’t drink, and stuff).
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: But it took a long time, and I got lots and lots of alcohol friends, but the learned so – really good friends, and yet they learned my behavior. Walked into Risotti’s at Stanford (a big, famous bar), a lot of the football guys in there, with that incredible queen I was going with, with her pin at the time, stuck right here, you know.
RW: You pinned her?
WW: Yeah.
RW: Uh-huh.
[45:42]
WW: And walked into that bar and here’s some guys I really knew well, and big, tough guys. Oh, no – you already heard about, “Don’t screw around.”
RW: Right, exactly.
WW: And they didn’t ever; nobody ever did.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: And it then went into another story with a guy that threw a knife at me. And that was the beginning of knowing how to do everything. And it was the war. The ranch was huge, so Pa – and this begins many mentors – Pa would take 75 brasseros off the railroad train every spring, to do the haying, and replace (what I call) the “real” guys. And they couldn’t speak English, I couldn’t speak Spanish. I was – you know what I was. And I was the same cocky kid you’re looking at today, frankly. (You already heard how the attitude became that way.) Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 45
But anyway, I had one guy that just became an early favorite. Pa you see, he could speak perfect Spanish, I told you that yesterday. And this guy, among many that I befriended (they had to be my friends, who else?). Anyway, this one guy was Japanese (100% Japanese), and he was just this –
RW: Not too tough?
WW: Yeah, he was really little; little, and strong, and active, and quick. And I don’t think there’s any question on Earth that he was completely a Mexican national – oh, yeah. Well, I got to show you this one – it’s quicker than telling you. Oh, I can’t, okay.
RW: Well, we can undo you [mic].
WW: No; no, no.
RW: And you can stand up.
WW: I want to finish this story. So he – in the bottom of that same bunkhouse was a rock room (it’s two-stories on the back, on the front it’s one) [laughs].
[48:10]
RW: Right, right; sloping.
WW: And he’s down there. And they’re working, and they’re working. But this guy (the Japanese guy that I like so much) is lying on his bed, sick. And he’s lying on his bed, completely flat, over in – I think it’s – I measured it. I took an archaeologist friend of mine from the ranch, and measured, and it’s written somewhere, exactly the distance. But I think it was 14 feet – I think it was 14 feet in a straight line across there, to his feet over there.
And he’s a line, with his head in the corner, and on the walls over here. See, there’s a straight wall – he’s lying – I came in from outside, he’s lying in this corner, a big stone wall (thick wall), he’s lying in his corner on his bunk, and he’s got a pillow behind his head. And he’s just lying here, like this, full-length. And I came in, sauntered in there, and began to fool around, and visit with him; we couldn’t understand a word. And over there in that stone wall there was a little, teeny wooden locker, built into the wall. Probably had kind of a locker this deep, this wide; had a little latch on it, nicely framed up.
And anyway, I walked over like this, I walked over and I just reached down to that little latch, to flip it, to open the door. And thunk! –
[50:18]
RW: You were off that –
WW: Just, just right there – Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 46
RW: Uh-huh?
WW: Just right in the wood, that close, and I got the knife and I showed the FBI guy (my friend, who incidentally was the only friend that Mary had to [laughing] sit with yesterday in one of these). But anyway, it went in about that far, I was thrown so hard; it just embedded itself deeply. And I turned around – it didn’t even cross my mind he wanted to hurt me, and he didn’t.
RW: No.
WW: He had no intent.
RW: He just didn’t want you opening it up.
WW: No, guess why? Did they have liquor in there? [Laughs] I’ll never know; he didn’t want me to open it.
RW: Right.
WW: And anyway, he just immediately – I didn’t even see the move – I just, “Thunk!” [Laughing] “Holy Judas!” And I turned around and looked at him, and he just was lying back down the same way, and he laughed.
Well, so the whole focus of my life – how do I get that knife? (I wish I had Roscoe Worely’s), but how do I get that knife? And so, but anyway, he and I really were good friends. These guys – even then, as a kid – you could trust me.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: I don’t point fingers. Okay, so “How do I get that knife?” Well anyway, I worked desperately on that. “Are there any others? Do any of the other guys have them? And how do you use them?” Uh-oh, that’s the beginning of trouble.
Well, and so it went from there – and so pretty soon – well, “So and so has one. He was abandon in Mexico; he was a very bad guy, and he’s got one.” And it’s homemade, it’s identical shape as the one I got – I’ve got them both – and it’s only this long.
RW: Maybe about nine inches?
WW: The blade is only about like that –
RW: Okay.
WW: You wouldn’t be able to throw it very far.
[52:55]
RW: Um-hmm. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 47
WW: And it’s sort of flimsy. The other one is very super stiff; I mean, it the real McCoy – about like that.
RW: Uh-huh?
WW: What they were – the Mexicans made their version of what they thought was the copy of Jim Bowie’s knife.
RW: Okay.
WW: So this one guy, this bad guy – I still remember him. He had his clothes off one day when I was sitting there, and that’s the first place I saw bullet holes: three of them. Three of them, and obviously it didn’t kill him.
RW: Right.
WW: But three bullet holes in this part of his body.
RW: Right – his chest and stomach area?
WW: No, I don’t think one went through the ribs.
RW: Oh, so down lower in his stomach?
WW: Somehow he survived this.
RW: Wow, that’s amazing!
WW: They were completely round.
RW: Uh-huh?
WW: They had big scar tissue. Anyway, which layer served him to recognize him. But anyway, and then one other finally got one from another guy. And somehow they’d worked together to get these knives to me – and it was a banana knife. Do you know what they look like?
RW: Huh-uh, I don’t.
WW: These are pretty homemade type things: they’ve got bone handles, they fold into a curve, like this, and they have a hook blade. And you can open them, usually with a homemade, little thing you pull out, and get the blade, and it locks the blade open. And you cut bananas with them.
RW: Oh, okay.
WW: You cut lumps of bananas.
RW: Got you. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 48
WW: So it’s an “S”.
RW: Yeah.
WW: It’s curved this way, and that way. And when you shut it, it’s just the “s”.
RW: Oh, the lower part of the “s”?
WW: Yeah, and it’s about this long overall; it’s about this long.
RW: Maybe a –
WW: Not a foot, no, no, no.
RW: Not a foot?
WW: Not that long. Anyway, think of that.
Okay, so here’s the beginning of my coaching to be cuchillero, which is – a serape is around here; or in their case, often just a sombrero, “Where’s the knife, baby? Where’s your eyes?”
And then with the banana knife, of course, you can have it in your hand like this, but it’s open – same game – like that, anywhere, you know (but not so much forward, it’s more close to a person, you know).
RW: Uh-huh.
WW: You’re having a fight with him, you just rip him open with it. And so I just went on, and on, and on, and on, and on – confidence grew, and grew, and grew, and grew until I used to teach that stuff to very serious people: how to kill a person with a knife, quick, and where to get them, and why.
And like (the FBI guy), he said – he and I trained together on a SWAT team once, and he just had this abnormal fear of knives – a professional FBI guy! He’s done everything, he’s dealt with everybody, but he has this fear of knives: that’s normal, because you and I have cut our finger on a piece of paper or a knife, we haven’t been shot – so you’re scared of knives. [Laughs] That’s enough of that story.
RW: [Laughs] Now I’d like to –
WW: Now please put me right back where you want.
RW: Well, let me just give you an update on time: it’s noon.
WW: Okay.
RW: And I told my helper that’s back at the Gathering (where I’m working), that I would try to be back there 12:30 or 1:00. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 49
WW: Okay, good.
RW: So, and you probably, you know, probably need lunch and stuff. So let’s maybe focus on a few, key stories; and then we can add some of these other ones back in the transcript, when I send it to you.
[57:33]
WW: Mentors –
RW: Yeah, mentors.
WW: Are enormous.
RW: I’d like to know a little bit about some mentors, and I’d like to know about your family’s ranch, and if we have time, a little bit about the flying.
WW: Why don’t I skip through real quick to – so you have the – no, I don’t need to, you’ve got it.
RW: And I can just type it in.
What Bill’s talking about (I’m talking to the tape recorder now), what you’re talking about is, you’ve written down some stories that I can take, and add them to the transcript.
WW: Yes.
RW: Okay.
WW: Is that okay?
RW: Sounds perfect.
WW: That tells how he got the ranch.
RW: Okay, then we don’t need to do that.
WW: There’s a piece in there that isn’t in there, but it’s in there.
RW: Okay, well I’ll add this. When we’re finished up you can show me where – you know, I’ll add them.
WW: Aren’t they over here?
RW: Yeah, they’re right here, and I’ll add them.
WW: Let’s make dang sure. [Flipping through papers] This doesn’t have any underlining, I’m sorry to say. I need to look at this before you have it anyway, for a second – Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 50
RW: Sure.
WW: Just to double check it. I want to make sure the pages are there. This is going to help you so much. Now this is what we are going to talk about a little bit, sometime before you take it. [Flipping through papers] There’s the “Zebra Dun.” Okay, yeah; okay, you’re going to know a terrible lot from this.
RW: What I’ll plan on doing, is I’ll add this to the transcript. I’ll put it in a way that it’s not reflected that it came from the actual interview, but it’s something that you wrote about your father, and then we can go through that. So that’s what you’re saying, we don’t need to maybe go through that.
WW: And this, you see, is my mother’s memorial service.
[60:09]
RW: Oh, lovely.
WW: And it explains – I better just check the pages; it’s a crazy story. Boy, that was tough: whew.
RW: I bet.
WW: I’ve done them since.
RW: So those are those – I’m going to put them in here so I keep them.
WW: The only – this is the ranch standards, which tells a great deal –
RW: Oh, yeah! You were talking about that; may I have that, and add it too?
WW: Yes.
RW: Thank you.
WW: And the men at the ranch, even today, have this with the understanding that they’re supposed to add to it.
RW: Okay.
WW: If they have good ideas.
RW: Who started this?
WW: Constructive criticism.
RW: Right. Who started these ranch rules?
WW: Started what? Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 51
RW: Who created this? Who began this? Was this your dad, or you?
WW: My son, John discovered a thing handwritten by me many, many, many years ago, after I was running the company.
RW: Okay, so you started this?
WW: And this, you see, was 12-14-03 – he had it done on time – not rules, but ideas we’ve heard before, some are rules.
RW: And this is John typing these things that he’s found, that you wrote?
WW: He found it –
RW: And then things, did he add to it?
WW: He didn’t say much, he just told me he found this thing.
RW: Uh-huh.
[62:10]
WW: And I looked it up, and I copied it. Meanwhile, what this was in this state – I mean, that was back in the – when I wrote those, it must have been early ‘60s, or something.
RW: Okay.
WW: But I’ve always loved that type of stuff. This was just a family meeting, and they had asked me to have it typed and give it to them by a certain date. All I did, see, was I just pulled that thing John had got out –
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: Handwritten.
RW: So the family –
WW: And copied.
RW: So a family meeting between you and your kids?
WW: No, our whole family.
RW: Your whole family? Like your brother’s family?
WW: It would be spouses, and everybody – we tried to have these meetings.
RW: I see. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 52
WW: The company: the whatever we think we are.
RW: Okay, can I have that as a copy?
WW: Yeah!
RW: Thank you.
WW: You can keep both of them with no questions. If I had a chance, in my briefcase I have a colored thing, and I’d underline a couple things, big deal. But on Pa (WBW), I don’t want that to leave until I explain –
RW: Okay.
WW: The handwritten part.
RW: Okay. Well now we don’t have to – we know that the ranch was here.
WW: Now, we can skip it.
RW: We can skip it; we can talk about mentors, and a little bit about you, and the flying, and some of the things.
WW: Well, [laughs] you keep reaching for flying. But that’s all in this stuff, the triggers.
The mentors – the heart of it; and a lot of this is with Cliff. I’ve been lucky all my life, but if there was anything that was tremendously influential, it was being so fortunate to be born in 1930, and grew up in the Depression, and yet never lacked for food. I had everything I wanted: I had horses, I had dogs, I had a brother, I had family. I wasn’t very experienced much around other kids (although gradually Balboa began to make a difference – southern California). Because I outgrew the hay fever, see, not the ocean.
[64:43]
So, anyway, that’s why that sequence for me is those four things: the ranch, the ocean, the sky, the mountains.
So what the Depression brought were these people that needed work. And the way Pa treated them, of course, made a mark the way he taught me. But there were two people that I use as the examples of the very best, and the very worst. Now, the best was Perry Riggons.
RW: How do you spell his last name?
WW: R-I-G-G-O-N-S; and there’s a picture of him in the car. And the best was Perry Riggons; I didn’t have time to find a picture I have of the worst – and maybe they weren’t the worst, because you don’t know what you don’t know. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 53
But Perry Riggons was – we didn’t have a big brother – he was everything I wanted to be: he was real good looking; he was real strong, good looking, charismatic, friendly, super confident (but only in a nice way). Later I saw the hard side of him; he had a side as tough as that cabinet of steel. But he could ride anything you could saddle up, you know. I mean, boy, he was a bronc rider, and a cowboy.
Now this is the point: military business life – we all know what exec is: the executive officer. When the captain goes down, he takes over (or the commanding officer, or the head of the company), he takes over: he’s the next one that steps in and runs everything. Sometimes, even better than the captain did if he’s exceptional.
[67:25]
Well anyway, this was the finest example of an executive officer I have ever, ever known. Think that over. He had a sixth grade education, period. Well, Perry Riggons. And then the other one was – [laughing] I started to say Roscoe Worley.
RW: [Laughs]
WW: You know, incidentally on the post-traumatic bit – I wouldn’t even tell that story for years. I mean, I say “years” I bet it wasn’t years; you know, a long time.
RW: Yeah.
WW: Almost like I forgot it [makes clicking sound].
RW: Right.
WW: And then good, old [laughs] Charlie Carter – talk about nice looking (smaller); smaller, real nice looking, real bright, charismatic, curly, black hair. I’ve got a picture of me standing at the barn with his hand on my shoulder, and I’m what – eight or nine years old, you know, and a cowboy standing behind me – sure wasn’t a cowboy!
But anyway, he sure knew about equipment and stuff, you know, he was not a mechanic. His mother (I know this, these are facts) – his mother owned a small hotel in Boston. And with a partner, he went on a two-guy crime spree, successfully across the United States, and was not caught until Santa Barbara (and that’s old Highway 1).
[69:28]
And he and his buddy pulled out of a service station there, and they didn’t pay for the gas, of course (of course), and they’re in a stolen car, and they roared out. Finally, the word had caught up with them. And whoever the people were: the sheriffs, the police, had a huge road block on that highway, right out in Santa Barbara; and they gunned him down because he came out fighting. And they shot him right through here. And he made the cops fall in love with him, because he lay there like this, holes through here. You would have never got me, but you got my gun arm. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 54
[Laughter]
That makes a cop love you. Sheriff Jess Harris – the airport is named for (Elko).
RW: Yeah, I’ve seen that sign.
WW: Yeah. Well, Jeff Harris and I knew each other in many, many, many different ways. And I still have a badge he gave me, “Deputy No. 13” [laughs].
RW: [Laughs]
WW: But anyway, he told me one thing that certainly was true, he said, “Charlie Carter was the most dangerous human I ever faced.” Well, so here’s Charlie Carter.
RW: So how did you and Charlie Carter’s paths cross?
WW: Well, you know Roscoe Worley?
RW: Yeah.
WW: Guess who showed up as a chore boy?
RW: He’s the next chore boy?
WW: No, he showed up as a chore boy, and we had – just like Roscoe (with Roscoe I was older – Charlie came first) –
RW: Okay. But Charlie was a chore boy?
WW: Yeah. He came as a chore boy, he couldn’t do anything else.
RW: Is this before his crime spree or after?
WW: No, no! I told you that story before they ever heard of him.
RW: Okay.
WW: He went to the pen.
RW: And then this is after the pen, when he comes to the people –
[71:39]
WW: Yeah. And he came out of the pen on parole (in those days) to Pa; Pa knew his whole story.
RW: Okay.
WW: You’ve got to know this guy, Pa, to understand (and Ma too). Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 55
And anyway, so here’s good, old Charlie; and what a fun guy. And so little John and I, probably, what – seven, eight, nine, ten – as we went along. We had the chores with him, we ha to help him with the wood (carry the wood, and chop the wood, and bring the wood, and put it in the house). And he’d watch the kids when the folks weren’t around, and everything, you know. And he did real good.
I do remember once coming home from Elko in the car at the 71, and he had –
You okay?
RW: Yeah, I’m just going to quickly text her that I’m still here. You keep going, I’m good. I just want her to know. [Referring to work associate at the Cowboy Poetry Gathering that Randy Williams will take over for later in the day.]
WW: And he had tipped one of the early tractors (three-wheeled John Deere), he had driven it off the edge of the road, and tipped it over.
RW: That’s not good.
WW: That wasn’t good. Anyway, I heard this and saw this with my own eyes – the next go around, he came to my folks (he came to Pa, Christmas), he said, “My record’s good, I’ve got a lot of money that they gave me when I was let out of the pen (that I earned in the pen). And I’ve earned my money here; can I go home and visit my mother?”
RW: Back to Boston?
WW: For Christmas. And I heard him say, I heard Pa say, “Okay, but just remember, behave yourself.” And I remember very shortly afterwards that – remember I emphasized that we didn’t have any money (hardly). I mean, Pa got salary. And he marched into Ma’s little dinette, kitchenette upstairs, on the top floor. And he said, “Lynn, Charlie’s in jail in Denver, and I’m going back to see why.”
[74:12]
I was there when he came home. He said – he just laughed – he said, “Charlie’s hopeless.” He said, “I went to the jail, and I asked him how come he took those suitcases? And he said, ‘I made a terrible mistake – I thought one of them was full of watches.’” But he didn’t tell what he did to get them.
He went to the airport, and he hi-jacked a cab, and he grabbed the driver (and it’s below zero in Denver), and he drove him out into a furrowed field, tied him hand and foot, and left him in the furrowed field at night. And the guy lost his legs from the middle of the calves, down.
Then he went to the airport, and he either captured two stewardesses, or two – anyway, two women and the suitcases. And he took them somewhere in the cabby – he happily took them somewhere, got rid of them, had the two suitcases. Well, next stop: Alcatraz. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 56
So here is the kid at Stanford (oh, he kept in touch with family, steadily), and he would always say the same thing; Christmas cards Ma kept (she’d always write to him). He always said the same thing, “This place would make a good man go bad.” Those words; he’d always say that. “Help me get out of here.” And they’d laugh.
I mean, he taught John and I things you don’t teach kids, you know. Those little kids – he was a second-story specialist burglary.
RW: Hmm.
WW: And my mother even likes all these stories – I don’t know if he told her this one: he told us about getting caught on his bed in the second story in Las Vegas, for newlyweds all night. And then (little kids), “Um-hmm.” And then Ma liked one of the stories though. They totally surrounded a hotel in Las Vegas (different in those days). And they had him cornered. But they didn’t question this poor, old crippled lady, with the hairy legs –
RW: [Laughing]
[76:54]
WW: That came walking out through the lines.
So anyway, here I am at Stanford, and I’m – how do I explain the way I am? It was after Stanford, I was back at the ranch; I was back at the ranch and I wanted to be sure that I flew in the Navy, and continued my training. And commanding officer, Oakland Naval Air Station flew a two-engine bomber to Elko and picked me up, and took me down.
And like I say, I mean, I’m going to be respectful, but I’ve always been the way I am. And we had a wonderful time, and we were having dinner at his house, and he was talking. And he was talking about some of his favorite stuff (he was one of those old, famous carrier captains during the war. But anyway, he said that he often played golf with the warden of Alcatraz! [Laughs] He said –
RW: And your mind starts spinning.
WW: No, not too bad at the time. He just said, “Yeah.” And then he said, -- guess what he said? The same words: he said, “The warden,” he said, “the warden – “
I said, “Yeah, you know, such and such.” And he said, “The warden said to me that there are some guys” (the captain said this very self-confidently) he said, “The warden told me there are some guys up there that really shouldn’t be there.”
[Laughing] And I – instantly got my attention. And the captain said, “He said of this one guy,” (and he described Charlie vividly). And he said, “He is such a neat guy, that my wife and I have gone to the (whatever it is) and requested that he be made our house boy on Alcatraz.”
[79:19] Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 57
I said [laughing], “What’s his name?” And Captain Weston – I told Captain a story (Captain Weston). And he said, “I’ll ask him.” Well Captain Weston called me in just a very short time when they got us back at Stanford, or something. And he called me, and he said, “His name is Charlie Carter, and he’s not going to be a houseboy.”
RW: [Laughs]
WW: I’m married, I’m at the ranch; the door opens, we’re out there at that lonely ranch. I’m sitting there with Pa, and there’s a couch (the house that Preston lives in now), there’s a couch, and many a people have sat on that couch. And knock, knock, and here comes this car, and here’s Charlie: a little mustache. And he walked in, he looks older, and he’s got the two worst-looking people, right to this day, I have ever seen. A woman that’s this big around, her glasses are that thick [makes groaning sound]; and he’s got this weird guy with him.
And Pa’s first words, “Charlie, what are you doing here?” He said, “We knew, he had kept touch.”
RW: Um-hmm?
WW: He had a trading post with a partner in Las Vegas, New Mexico. “Why aren’t you there?”
“Well everybody needs a vacation: my partner’s taking care of it; that’s what you have partners for.”
“That car you’re driving isn’t stolen, is it?”
He flicked the keys, like this, “Oh, no; of course not. And these are so and so.”
And Ma took those three people (now days, for drugs, you wouldn’t – but remember, even the criminal world has a code), and she took those three people all through her new house there, at the ranch (that big house). And they left, and they were gone for – I’d say two days, three days – I think four days. And the FBI showed up and said, “Have you seen Charlie?”
“Yes.”
“Well, we can’t find him. We’ve got an all-points bulletin, all states.” But most wanted: I mean this boy is serious. “We found his car – it was parked right there on Idaho Street.”
RW: Um-hmm. Here in Elko.
WW: By the courthouse.
RW: Okay.
[82:03] Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 58
WW: And it was stolen. So we impounded it across the street, where it used to be Warren Motor Company.
RW: Yeah.
WW: And he said, “We had it for a couple of days, and all of a sudden this freaky guy walked into the shop, and he said, ‘I don’t know anything about that car, but you got my razor in it.’” So he said, “We’ve got those two, but we haven’t got Charlie.” The ambushes caught him, guess where? Buhl, Idaho.
RW: [Chuckles]
WW: And they put him in the jail in Buhl, and the sheriff – and I don’t know the time he spent there, not more than a day or two – and the sheriff told the people there, he said, “Okay, I’ll stay here tonight, and you don’t need to worry; I got control.” They came to the jail in the morning, sheriff’s car was gone, sheriff was inside the jail, locked in (locked in the cell), and in the middle of the round table there was a note, with something like this stuck in, “See ya later, baby!” And on, and on the stories go.
RW: Um-hmm.
WW: Because he re-surfaced; his weakness was returning to places, dressed to the nines: best-dressed guy in the hotel, Stockmen’s Hotel. Boy, he was gambling away, and had lots of money. And they knew he was there: Jess Harris (the sheriff), everybody surrounded the place. And they ran out there, the FBI – they all had him cornered – and they ran up behind him and grabbed him (he’s terrible strong).
And he just exploded screaming, “Help! Help, these people are trying to rob me.” Bam! Out the door, he got away! Streaked out onto the street, spun around on that curb, you know, spun around on that curve, and one of the guys chasing him – I think Sheriff Harris thought it was an FBI guy – one of the guys chasing him kicked his hand, and knocked the gun away.
[84:42]
Years later, sitting there in the living room, and Pa was still alive (he died in ’66), “Elko Daily Free Press” – little, bitty thing, “Charles Carter, Age 62,” (I think it said, or something), “is found in a line in a furrow, in a below zero weather, in Mindon, Nevada, where he had used a nail and carved out of the jail. And we’ve got him; we caught him.”
And Pa said to me, “That’s got to be him.”
That’s the last any of us ever heard [laughs].
RW: You have had so many interesting people in your life.
WW: Yeah, and they go on and on. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 59
RW: Yeah. The pendulum swings high and low.
WW: And I’d love to tell you more, because mentors – I’d be nobody except for my mentors. And I was born a hero-worshipper, and I’ve always had heroes. I’ve always been a dreamer. I wanted to be good, I wanted to be strong, I wanted to be tough, I wanted to be brave – I wanted to do stuff. “They call me a dreamer; and maybe I am. Of faraway places, maybe Siam.” You know that type of stuff.
RW: Um-hmm. WW: The wanderlust is in me, and my soul is in Coffey [not sure which city you are referencing?].
And Perry Riggons is so big in my life, that when we get a chance, that’s got to be a critical series: Perry Riggons. And I just can’t owe him more. And Hilary; on and on, and on. Ray Analo[??]: killed three people. Ray Analo taught me so many things; I spoke at his service when he died: told the true story of his life, in front of the whole audience. My daughter-in-law, Patricia, is sitting in the front row, and here’s a family of Ray Analo sitting here, here is Ray (I mean, Ray isn’t there) [laughs].
[87:25]
And he died working for us. And anyway, I could see Patricia just – shutter.
RW: Cringing a little bit?
WW: Yeah, because –
RW: Because you’re saying the truth?
WW: Yeah, because I’m going to tell the whole truth.
RW: Right, right.
WW: Why did he kill them?
RW: Yeah.
WW: Of course, it’s alcohol.
RW: Well, I’m thinking you know, it’s about – I’m looking at my watch, and your watch – and it’s 12:36. And how does this sound – I would like to ask you one more question –
WW: Okay.
RW: And then –
WW: And I’ll try and just stay with it. Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 60
RW: Finish for today, and then I will get this transcribed, send it back to you. And then we’ll filter in the things you’ve given me.
WW: Yeah.
RW: And then we’ll go from there, and make some plans for the future.
WW: Let’s see if you can’t schedule me to come to Logan.
RW: That would be awesome.
WW: And make a trade – I don’t mean – so that I get to have (not more than four hours ever) to have to do this.
RW: Sure.
WW: Even though I love it. And the other four hours, I do what I do.
RW: Sounds good, let’s do that.
WW: And like, it would be nice if I could ski or do stuff like that. So ask me.
RW: Okay.
WW: [Laughing] If you can remember! You’re like me.
RW: No, I’m trying to phrase it. In your life, what is – of all you’ve learned, when you teach your kids, what are some of the philosophies that you pass on?
WW: You’re leaving at four? I’m not talking for a minute. You’re leaving at four – I think those are written pretty carefully.
RW: Okay, in those rules?
[89:28]
WW: No, not all of them, but lots of them are there. But my life – yeah [claps], I do have something I’m going to give you, and I think I’ve got a copy in Elko. I’ll get it to you.
I said it to you yesterday, “To everybody, somebody first.” And the more you know about the other person, the better off you are: whether he be enemy, friend, teammate – different everything. And a lot of that philosophy is in that –
RW: Okay.
WW: Memorial service.
RW: Okay, um-hmm: to your mother? Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 61
WW: Yeah.
RW: Okay.
WW: But it’s be respectful of everybody; that doesn’t mean you don’t react instantly, if you have to. Yeah, you’re respectful, you’re done baby – you know. I mean, I’m really capable of some – can make things happen pretty fast.
But I love this one – this is one of mine: get up in the morning cheerful, no matter what happened.
RW: Um-hmm?
WW: Because the sun also rises. And what did that to me was my wife – I used her. And what triggered that, made it real (I’ve always thought that) – but what triggered me was I noticed it that morning that Pa died: the sun came up, and I could see the cowboys coming along the fence, on their horses.
[91:40]
But anyway, me and Ray Analo had to go get him, (and another guy). But Victoria said, “What should I teach my kids? How would you answer that, real quick?” I couldn’t think. And then suddenly I said, “Get up in the morning cheerful, like your mom.”
And the way that worked was that we had – it was summer, it was a huge hay year, we had a big hay crew. A lot of those people are college (or whatever) guys, that disappear. We had these humongous rainstorms, just humongous; people were killed on the freeway hitting piles of hail, and it would be day after day. My brother, in jet fighter, was at 40,000, over the ranch, and he was still flying through the tops at this particular time.
And it kept happening, and meanwhile I’ve got all this hay to do. We can’t get it, it keeps coming and wrecking the hay, it’s a little droopy. So what do we do? “Let’s go climb Pilot Peak.” (Which is that peak above the salt flats, remember?) “Okay, let’s go climb Pilot Peak.”
“Okay.” [Laughs]
I’ve got a bunch of yo-yos, I’ve got – let’s see, two Cannons (names are Cannon), two Stanford – two young guys who were haying for me, stackers: big, tough, strong, well-built athletes (one All American, actually in – what’s the All American in? No, no; anyway, that’s beside the point; one of those guys made All America, not in football. I had those two guys.) And, I had two kids: Preston, who was (had to be, whatever he was), and John, who was only nine.
[94:08]
RW: These are your two boys? Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 62
WW: Huh?
RW: John and Preston are your boys?
WW: Yeah, and John is the youngest (Bill wasn’t there, he was going somewhere), and of course, Mary. Well anyway, she took the Land Rover, and drove to the northwest corner of Pilot, where they specialize in raising drugs (and I knew that even then), and it made me a little nervous. Meanwhile I use the supercut to go there, and find exactly where we would climb and get it figured. I wanted to go clear to the top, and clear to the, down the side, and meet her.
And so I landed the airplane, and a druggie came down – I’m serious about that – he came down and visited with me, and I said, “Watch my airplane.” And I tied the plane down, took our sleeping bags, hiked right above his place. And right at the foot at the steep, and the rain started to – God, it just came like a bear! Hail, and rain, and we’re in our sleeping bags, and I’m just being, just thinking, “Oh my God! I was tired anyway; I was totally worn out, and now this?” [Laughs] Okay.
And so here was this incredible female specimen, over there probably, as far as across the – we sort of had a – you know, you make a hole for your sleeping bag, to make it cozy, in the brush, on the cow trailer, or something. And she was in this hole, and she had just pajamas thing – nightie you can see through, you know. And this figure is just beyond description. And she stands up fully, like this, you know, and she was laughing, and her hair was just like this. Man, she said, “I feel like I just slept in a tub all night, ha, ha, ha.” You know what I wanted to do? Kill her!
[Laughter]
[96:27]
And it was an incredible hike, and we did the whole deal. And we found the – thanks to Preston – it’s one mile across the top, and you climb boulders that are bigger than you can believe are possible. And around them, and over them, endless rock slides; and there are a lot of neat things up there. And Mary and I have climbed these places together in the past (she never climbed Pilot). It’s true, she didn’t have to climb it; she had to bring the Land Rover around, to pick us up at the south end. But no, no – she would have been identical, even if she was going to climb – don’t kid yourself.
And it caught us on top with terrible lightening and storms, but we made it; we had slickers, and we make it, obviously. And we got to the end, and we were going down. And if you go to Wendover, and look at Pilot – on the south end (facing south), you’ll see right close to the tippy, tippy top, there’s a little dip like this: just a little dip in the mountain. And in there, you can barely see, usually, just little spots, little trees – field glasses you can see them.
And here comes this young kid (real young). Preston, and John of course, and Preston stopped in that place, like Preston is – you don’t know him, do you? [Laughing] Oh, my gosh. He stood like this, completely quiet and he said, “That’s a Bristlecone.” And he Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 63
said, “There’s four of them.” (And there were.) And later I told the United States about them, you know, the Forest Service – they’d never known that before; that they were up there. They knew there were some on Pearl Peak –
RW: Um-hmm.
[98:43]
WW: But they didn’t know they were there. Isn’t that neat?
RW: That’s very neat. A little naturalist!
WW: [Laughing] Oh yeah. The family is that way. But I would recognize them now, I think.
RW: Uh-huh.
WW: But I’m not near as good as him. But I thought that’s very, very, very important. And I have to say it to myself – I get sour. And one more little story – and I don’t mind saying it here. This was this year. You never want to complain when you’ve had such a good life, but the better you’ve had it, the more you regret losing pieces.
And anyway, I was flying, and I was flying in the mountains, and it was a hot day. And the air was bad – and that’s hairy; it’s hard work, it was this summer. And I landed, and came back to Mula Vista. I’d been flying for a long time, I think with a cowboy, and something – of course, you’ve got to do it right, you don’t want to be dead. And it was so unpleasant in the Super Cub because the wings are straight, instead of this.
RW: Hmm.
WW: So, instead of rolling – that’s why airplanes have that thing on the wing – instead of rolling with the bumps, they go, “Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk.” And it just drives you batty. It’s as if you fell into a bad roll.
And I landed at the ranch, and I was sitting in the plane, trying to get out –
[Phone ringing]
I think I better let it ring for a minute, okay? Good. But I think this should be recorded.
RW: It’s on.
[100:38]
WW: Oh, and John (who was running the crew in the field) –
RW: Your son?
WW: He flies too, you know, he was an ag pilot, and stuff like I was once. And he came rushing up, and he said, “Dad, would you go to Twin Falls, and pick up some parts?” Ranch Family Oral History Project: William Wright Page 64
And I said, “Well, I am just dying – I’m going to have something to eat, and something to drink. I’ve got to take a break.” And you know, the middle of the day it’s the worst – say from two to four, is the very worst of all: turbulence, and the heat, and everything.
So I went up the hill, and I made the sad mistake of walking in the house, and my wife was sitting there, and I said – I just said, “[Groans] Oh, I can’t do that, I just can’t.”
And she never jumps on me; she did. She said, “Listen, you quit that complaining.” (She doesn’t talk like that to me.) “You quit that complaining! Don’t you realize that they are still able to ask you to do those things?” Whew! Boy, I gulped my food, and boy I was in Twin Falls, and I was in a good mood! And I got home that night with the parts, right on time.
I think that’s terribly important.
RW: It is, very important.
WW: That’s all.
RW: Thank you.
[End part 2 of 2 – 102:24]